s
University of California Berkeley
Gift of
ROBERT B. HONEYMAN, JR.
THE
LUCK OF ROARING CAMP,
AND
OTHER SKETCHES.
BY
FKANCIS BEET HAKTE.
BOSTON:
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1870.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
UNIVERSITY PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,
CAMBRIDGE.
PREFACE.
A SERIES of designs suggested, I think, by
Hogarth's familiar cartoons of the Industrious
and Idle Apprentices I remember as among the
earliest efforts at moral teaching in California. They
represented the respective careers of The Honest and
Dissolute Miners : the one, as I recall him, retrograd-
ing through successive planes of dirt, drunkenness,
disease, and death the other advancing by corre-
sponding stages to affluence and a white shirt. What-
ever may have been the artistic defects of these
drawings, the moral at least was obvious and distinct.
That it failed, however, as it did, to produce the
desired reform in mining morality may have been
owing to the fact that the average miner refused to
recognize himself in either of these positive char-
acters ; and that even he who might have sat
for the model of the Dissolute Miner was perhaps
dimly conscious of some limitations and circumstances
which partly relieved him from responsibility. " Yer
see," remarked such a critic to the writer, in the un-
translatable poetry of his class, "it ain't no square
game. They 've just put up the keerds on that chap
from the start."
iv PREFACE.
With this lamentable example before me, I trust
that in the following sketches I have abstained from
any positive moral. I might have painted my villains
of the blackest dye, so black, indeed, that the origi-
nals thereof would have contemplated them with the
glow of comparative virtue. I might have made it
impossible for them to have performed a virtuous or
generous action, and have thus avoided that moral
confusion which is apt to arise in the contemplation
of mixed motives and qualities. But I should have
burdened myself with the responsibility of their
creation, which, as a humble writer of romance and
entitled to no particular reverence, I did not care
to do.
I fear I cannot claim, therefore, any higher motive
than to illustrate an era of which Californian history
has preserved the incidents more often than the char-
acter of the actors, an era which the panegyrist was
too often content to bridge over with a general com-
pliment to its survivors, an era still so recent that in
attempting to revive its poetry, I am conscious also
of awakening the more prosaic recollections of these
same survivors, and yet an era replete with a certain
heroic Greek poetry, of which perhaps none were more
unconscious than the heroes themselves. And I shall
be quite content to have collected here merely the
materials for the Iliad that is yet to be sung.
SAN FRANCISCO, December 24, 1869.
CONTENTS.
SKETCHES.
PAGE
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP 1
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT .... 19
MIGGLES 37
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 56
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH 72
HIGH- WATER MARK 89
A LONELY RIDE . . 103
THE MAN OF No ACCOUNT . . * . . . 113
STORIES.
MLISS 123
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER . . . 166
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD 180
BOHEMIAN PAPERS.
MISSION DOLORES 219
JOHN CHINAMAN 224
FROM A BACK WINDOW . . . . . . 230
BOONDER . 235
SKETCHES.
THE LUCK OF ROAKINa CAMP.
THEEE was commotion in Bearing Camp. It
could not have been a fight, for in 1850 that
was not novel enough to have called together the
entire settlement. The ditches and claims were
not only deserted, but " Tuttle's grocery " had con-
tributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered,
calmly continued their game the day that French
Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over
the bar in the front room. The whole camp was
collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of
the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low
tone, but the name of a woman was frequently
repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the
camp, " Cherokee Sal."
Perhaps the less said of her the better. She
was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful
woman. But at that time she was the only wo-
man in Eoaring Camp, and was just then lying in
sore extremity, when she most needed the minis-
tration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned,
and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyr-
dom hard enough to bear even when veiled by
i A
2 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
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 expia-
tion of her sin, that, at a moment when she most
lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she
met only the half-contemptuous faces of her mas-
culine associates. Yet a few of the spectators
were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy
Tipton thought it was " rough on Sal," and, in the
contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose
superior to the fact that he had an ace and two
bowers in his sleeve.
It will be seen, also, that the situation was novel.
Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring
Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had
been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and
with no possibility of return ; but this was the first
time that anybody had been introduced db initio.
Hence the excitement.
" You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent
citizen known as " Kentuck," addressing one of
the loungers. " Go in there, and see what you kin
do. You 've had experience in them things."
Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection.
Stumpy, in other climes, had been the putative
head of two families ; in fact, it was owing to some
legal informality in these proceedings that Eoaring
THE LUCK OF EOARING CAMP. 3
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 Eoaring Camp sat down outside,
smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue.
The assemblage numbered about a hundred men.
One or two of these were actual fugitives from
justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless.
Physically, they exhibited no indication -of their
past lives and character. The greatest scamp had
a Eaphael face, with a profusion of blond hair ;
Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and
intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest
and most courageous man was scarcely over five
feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed,
timid manner. The term "roughs" applied to
them was a distinction rather than a definition.
Terhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears,
etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these
slight omissions did not detract from their ag-
gregate force. The strongest man had but three
fingers on his right hand ; the best shot had but
one eye.
Such was the physical aspect of the men that
were dispersed around the cabin. The camp lay
in a triangular valley, between two hills and a
river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the
summit of a hill that faced the cabin, now illumi-
4 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
nated by the rising 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 fire of withered pine-boughs added sociability
to the gathering. By degrees the natural levity
of Eoaring Camp returned. Bets were freely offered
and taken regarding the result. Three to five that
" Sal would get through with it " ; even, that the
child would survive ; side bets as to- the sex and
complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst
of an excited discussion an exclamation came
from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped
to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the
pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crack-
ling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry, a cry
unlike anything heard before in the camp. The
pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush,
and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature
had stopped to listen too.
The camp rose to its feet as one man ! It was
proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder, but, in
consideration of the situation of the mother, bet-
ter counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers
were discharged ; for, whether owing to the rude
surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Chero-
kee 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 Eoaring Camp, its
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 5
sin and shame forever. I do not think that the an-
nouncement disturbed them much, except in spec-
ulation 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 prob-
lematical than the ancient treatment of Eomulus
and Remus, and apparently as successful.
When these details were completed, which ex-
hausted another hour, the door was opened, and the
anxious crowd of men who had already formed
themselves into a q^sue, 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. Be-
side the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was
soon indicated. " Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with
a singular mixture of authority and ex qfficio com-
placency, " Gentlemen will please pass in at the
front door, round the table, and out at the back
door. Them as wishes to contribute anything to-
ward the orphan will find a hat handy." The first
man entered with his hat on ; he uncovered, how-
ever, as he looked about him, and so, unconscious-
ly, set an example to the next. In such comma-
6 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
nities good and bad actions are catching. As the
procession filed in, comments were audible, crit-
icisms addressed, perhaps, rather to Stumpy, in
the character of showman, " Is that him ? "
" mighty small specimen " ; " has n't mor'n got the
color " ; " ain't bigger nor a derringer." The con-
tributions were as characteristic : A silver tobacco-
box ; a doubloon ; a navy revolver, silver mounted ;
a gold specimen ; a very beautifully embroidered
lady's handkerchief (from Oakhurst the gambler) ;
a diamond breastpin ; a diamond ring (suggested
by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he
" saw that pin and went two diamonds better ") ;
a slung shot ; a Bible (contributor not detected) ;
a golden spur ; a silver teaspoon (the initials, I re-
gret to say, were not the giver's) ; a pair of sur-
geon's shears ; a lancet ; a Bank of England note
for 5 ; and about $ 200 in loose gold and silver
coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained
a silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a
gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on
his right. Only one incident occurred to break
the monotony of the curious procession. As Ken-
tuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the
child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at
his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment.
Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed. Some-
thing like a blush tried to assert itself in his
weather-beaten cheek. " The d d little cuss ! "
THE LUCK OF KOARING CAMP. 7
he said, as he extricated his finger, with, perhaps,
more tenderness and care than he might have been
deemed capable of showing. He held that finger
a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and
examined it curiously. The examination provoked
the same original remark in regard to the child.
In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. " He
rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tipton,
holding up the member, " the d d little cuss ! "
It was four o'clock before the camp sought re-
pose. 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, inva-
riably ending with his characteristic condemnation
of the new-comer. It seemed to relieve him of
any unjust implication of sentiment, and Kentuck
had the weaknesses of the nobler sex. When
everybody else had gone to bed, he walked down
to the river, and whistled reflectingly. Then he
walked up the gulch, past the cabin, still whistling
with demonstrative unconcern. At a large red-
wood tree he paused and retraced his steps, and
again passed the cabin. Half-way down to the
river's bank he again paused, and then returned
and knocked at the door. It was opened by
Stumpy. " How goes it ? " said Kentuck, looking
past Stumpy toward the candle-box. " All serene,"
replied Stumpy. " Anything up ? " " Nothing."
8 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
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. " Eastled with it, the d d little cuss/'
he said, and retired.
The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude se-
pulture as Koaring Camp afforded. After her
body had been committed to the hillside, there
was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what
should be done with her infant. A resolution to
adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an
animated discussion in regard to the manner and
feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprung
up. It was remarkable that the argument partook
of none of those fierce personalities with which
discussions were usually conducted at Eoaring
Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the
child to Red Dog, a distance of forty miles,
where female attention could be procured. But
the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and unan-
imous opposition. It was evident that no plan
which entailed parting from their new acquisition
would for a moment be entertained. " Besides,"
said Tom Ryder, " them fellows at Red Dog would
swap it, and ring in somebody else on us." A dis-
belief 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
THE LUCK OF SOARING CAMP. 9
decent woman could be prevailed to accept Koar-
ing Camp as her home, and the speaker urged
that " they did n't want any more of the other
kind." This unkind allusion to the defunct moth-
er, harsh as it may seem, was the first spasm of
propriety, the first symptom of the camp's re-
generation. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps
he felt a certain delicacy in interfering with the
selection of a possible successor in office. But
when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and
" Jinny " the mammal before alluded to could
manage to rear the child. There was something
original, independent,- and heroic about the plan
that pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained.
Certain articles were sent for to Sacramento.
"Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of
gold-dust into the expressman's hand, " the best
that can be got, lace, you know, and filigree-work
and frills, d m the cost'!"
Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the
invigorating climate of the mountain camp was
compensation for material deficiencies. Nature
took the foundling to her broader breast. In that
rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills, that air
pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial
at once bracing and exhilarating, he may have
found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry
that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phospho-
rus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the
i*
10 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
latter and good nursing. " Me and that ass," he
would say, " has been father and mother to him !
Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the help-
less bundle before him, " never go back on us."
By the time he was a month old, the necessity
of giving him a name became apparent. He had
generally been known as " the Kid," " Stumpy's
boy," "the Cayote" (an allusion to his vocal
powers), and even by Kentuck's endearing di-
minutive of "the d d little cuss." But these
were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were
at last dismissed under another influence. Gam-
blers and adventurers are generally superstitious,
and Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had
brought "the luck" to Eoaring Camp. It was
certain that of late they had been successful.
" Luck " was the name agreed upon, with the pre-
fix of Tommy for greater convenience. ~No allu-
sion 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 accord-
ingly set apart for the christening. 'What was
meant by this ceremony the reader may imagine,
who has already gathered some idea of the reck-
less irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of
ceremonies was one "Boston," a noted wag, and
the occasion seemed to promise the greatest face-
tiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 11
days in preparing a burlesque of the church ser-
vice, with pointed local allusions. The choir was
properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand
godfather. But after the procession had marched
to the grove with music and banners, and the child
had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy
stepped before the expectant crowd. " It ain't my
style to spoil fun, boys," said the little man, stout-
ly, eying the faces around him, " but it strikes me
that this thing ain't exactly on the squar. It 's
playing it pretty low down on this yer baby to ring
in fun on him that he ain't going to understand.
And ef there 's going to be any godfathers round,
I 'd like to see who 's got any better rights than
me." A silence followed Stumpy's speech. To
the credit of all humorists be it said, that the first
man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist,
thus stopped of his fun. " But," said Stumpy,
quickly, following up his advantage, " we 're here
for a christening, and we '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 uttered otherwise than pro-
fanely in the camp. The form of christening was
perhaps even more ludicrous than the satirist had
conceived; but, strangely enough, nobody saw it
and nobody laughed. " Tommy " was christened
as seriously as he would have been under a Chris-
12 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
tian roof, and cried and was comforted in as ortho-
dox fashion.
And so the work of regeneration began in Boar-
ing Camp. Almost imperceptibly a change came
over the settlement. The cabin assigned to " Tom-
my Luck " or " The Luck," as he was more
frequently called first showed signs of improve-
ment. It was kept scrupulously clean and white-
washed. 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 rehabili-
tation 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 appre-
ciate 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 appearance of Eoaring Camp
tended to produce stricter habits of personal clean-
liness. Again, Stumpy imposed a kind of quaran-
tine upon those who aspired to the honor and
privilege of holding " The Luck." It was a cruel
mortification to Kentuck who, in the careless-
ness of a large nature and the habits of frontier
life, had begun to regard all garments as a second
cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off
through decay to be debarred this privilege
from certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 13
subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter
appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt,
and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor
were moral and social sanitary laws neglected.
" Tommy/' who was supposed to spend his whole
existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must
not be disturbed by noise. The shouting and yell-
ing which had gained the camp its infelicitous
title were not permitted within hearing distance
of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers, or
smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly
given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout
the camp a popular form of expletive, known as
" D n the luck ! " and " Curse the luck ! " was
abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vo-
cal music was not interdicted, being supposed to
have a soothing, tranquillizing quality, and one
song, sung by " Man-o'-War Jack," an English
sailor, from her Majesty's Australian colonies,
was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugu-
brious recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa,
Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a
prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse,
" On b-o-o-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine
sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from
side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and
crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through
the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his
song, it contained ninety stanzas, and was con-
14 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
tinned with conscientious 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, smok-
ing their pipes and drinking in the melodious
utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pas-
toral happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere
kind o' think," said the Cockney Simmons, medi-
tatively reclining on his elbow, "is 'evingly." It
reminded him of Greenwich.
On the long summer days The Luck was usually
carried to the gulch, from whence the golden store
of Eoaring -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 signify
cance in these trifles, which they had so long trod-
den carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glit-
tering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, ^
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-
THE LUCK OF SOARING CAMP. 15
rounded by playthings such as never child out of
fairy-land had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy
was content. He appeared to be securely happy-
albeit there was an infantine gravity about him-
a contemplative light in his round gray eyes-
that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always
tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once,
having crept beyond his " corral," a hedge of
tessellated pine-boughs, which surrounded his bed,
he dropped over the bank on his head in the
soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in
the air in that position for at least five minutes
with unflinching gravity. He was extricated with-
out a murmur. I hesitate to record the many
other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfor-
tunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends.
Some of them were not without a tinge of super-
stition. " I crep' up the bank just now," said Ken-
tuck one day, in a breathless state of excitement,
" and dern my skin if he was n't a talking to a jay-
bird as was a sittin' on his lap. There they was,
just as free and sociable as anything you please,
a jawin' at each other just like two cherry-bums."
Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine-boughs
or lying lazily on his back blinking at the leaves
above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels
chattered, and the flowers Bloomed. Nature was
his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let
slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight
16 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
that fell just within his grasp ; she would send
wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of
bay and resinous gums ; to him the tall red-woods
nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumble-bees
buzzed, and the rooks .cawed a slumbrous accom-
paniment.
Such was the golden summer of Eoaring Camp.
They were " flush times," and the Luck was with
them. The claims had yielded enormously. The
camp was jealous of its privileges ancf looked sus-
piciously on strangers. No encouragement was
given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion
more perfect, the land on either side of the moun-
tain wall that surrounded the camp they duly pre-
empted. This, and a reputation for singular pro-
ficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of
Eoaring 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
' Eoaring/ that would lay over any street in Eed
Dog. They 've got vines and flowers round their
houses, and they wash themselves twice a day.
But they 're mighty rough on strangers, and they
worship an Ingin baby."
With the prosperity of the camp came a desire
for further improvement. It was proposed to build
a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one
or two decent families to reside there for the sake
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 17
of "The Luck/' who might perhaps profit by fe-
male companionship. The sacrifice that this con-
cession to the sex cost these men, who were
fiercely sceptical in regard to its general virtue
and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their
affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But
the resolve could not be carried into effect for three
months, and the minority meekly yielded in the
hope that something might turn up to prevent it.
And it did.
The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in
the foot-hills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras,
and every mountain creek became a river, and
every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was
transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that
descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees
and scattering its drift and debris along the
plain. Eed Dog had been twice under water, and
Eoaring Camp had been forewarned. " Water put
the gold into them gulches," said Stumpy. " It 's
been here -once and will be here again ! " And that
night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its
banks, and swept up the triangular valley of Eoar-
ing Camp.
In the confusion of rushing water, crushing trees,
and crackling timber, and the darkness which
seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair
valley, but little could be done to collect the scat-
tered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of
B
18 THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP.
Stumpy nearest the river-bank was gone. Higher
up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky
owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy, the
Luck, of Bearing Camp had disappeared. They
were returning with sad hearts, when a shout from
the bank recalled them.
It was a relief-boat from down the river. They
had picked up, they said, a man and an infant,
nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did
anybody know them, and did they belong here ?
It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck
lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still
holding the Luck of Eoaring Carnp in his arms.
As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they
saw that the child was cold and pulseless. " He
is dead," said one. Kentuck opened his eyes.
" Dead ? " he repeated feebly. " Yes, my man, and
you are dying too." A smile lit the eyes of the
expiring Kentuck. " Dying," he repeated, " he 's a
taking me with him, tell the boys I Ve got the
Luck with me now " ; and the strong man, cling-
ing to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to
cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy
river that flows forever to the unknown sea.
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
AS Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into
the main street of Poker Flat on the morning
of the twenty- third of November, 1850, he was
conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere
since the preceding night. Two or three men,
conversing earnestly together, ceased as he
approached, and exchanged significant glances.
There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in
a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked
ominous.
Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed
small concern in these indications. Whether he
was conscious of any predisposing cause, was an-
other question. " I reckon they 're after some-
body," he reflected ; " likely it 's me." He returned
to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had
been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat
from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his
mind of any further conjecture.
In point of fact, Poker* Flat was " after some-
body." It had lately suffered the loss of several
thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a promi-
nent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of vir-
20 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
tuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable
as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret
committee had determined to rid the town of all
improper persons. This was done permanently in
regard of two men who were then hanging from
the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and tempo-
rarily in the banishment of certain other objec-
tionable characters. I regret to say that some of
these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, how-
ever, to state that their impropriety was profes-
sional, and it was only in such easily established
standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit
in judgment.
Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he
was included in this category. A few of the com-
mittee had urged hanging him as a possible exam-
ple, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves
from his pockets of the sums he had won from
them. " It 's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler, " to
let this yer young man from Bearing Camp an
entire stranger carry away our money." But a
crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts
of those who had been fortunate enough to win
from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local
prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with phil-
osophic calmness, none the less coolly that ho
was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He
was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate.
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 21
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 deport-
ed wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of
the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was
known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose
intimidation the armed escort was intended, the
expatriated party consisted of a young woman fa-
miliarly known as " The Duchess " ; another, who
had bore the title of "Mother Shipton"; and
" Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and con-
firmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no
comments from the spectators, nor was any word
uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch
which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat
was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the
point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the
peril of their lives.
As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings
found vent in a few hysterical tears from the
Duchess, some bad language from Mother Ship-
ton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from
Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone
remained silent-. He listened calmly to Mother
Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to
the repeated statements of the Duchess that
she would die in* the road, and to the alarming
oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle
22 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good-
humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon
exchanging his own riding-horse, " Five Spot," for
the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But
even this act did not draw the party into any
closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted
her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded
coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of
" Five Spot " with malevolence, and Uncle Billy in-
cluded the whole party in one sweeping anathema.
The road to Sandy Bar a camp that, not hav-
ing as yet experienced the regenerating influences
of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some
invitation to the emigrants lay over a steep
mountain range. It was distant a day's severe
travel. In that advanced season, the party soon
passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the
foot-hills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the
Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At
noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon
the ground, declared her intention of going no far-
ther, and the party halted.
The spot was singularly wild and impressive.
A wooded amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides
by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gen-
tly toward the crest of another precipice that over-
looked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most
suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advis-
able. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and
the party were not equipped or provisioned for de-
lay. This fact he pointed out to his companions
curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the folly
of " throwing up their hand before the game was
played out." But they were furnished with liquor,
which in this emergency stood them in place of
food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his
remonstrances, it was not long before they were
more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy
passed rapidly from a bellicose state into one of
stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother
Shipton snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained
erect, leaning against a rock, calmly surveying
them.
Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with
a profession which required coolness, impassive-
ness, and presence of mind, and, in his own lan-
guage, he " could n't afford it." As he gazed at
his recumbent fellow-exiles, the loneliness begot-
ten 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 charac-
teristic 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,
24 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
singularly enough, was most conducive to that
calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He
looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand
feet sheer above the circling pines around him ;
at the sky, ominously clouded ; at the valley be-
low, already deepening into shadow. And, doing
so, suddenly he heard his own name called.
A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the
fresh, open face of the new-comer Mr. Oakhurst
recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as " The
Innocent " of Sandy Bar. He had met him some
months before over a " little game," and had, with
perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune
amounting to some forty dollars of that guile-
less youth. After the game was finished, Mr.
Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the
door and thus addressed him : " Tommy, you 're a
good little man, but you can't gamble worth a
cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed
him his money back, pushed him gently from the
room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.
There was a remembrance of this in his boyish
and enthusiastic greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He
had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his
fortune. " Alone ? " No, not exactly alone ; in
fact (a giggle), he had run away with Piney
Woods. Did n't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney ?
She that used to wait on the table at the Tem-
perance House ? They had been engaged a long
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 25
time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so
they had run away, and were- going to Poker Flat to
be married, and here they were. And they were
tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a
place to camp 'and company. All this the Inno-
cent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout, comely
damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine-
tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and
rode to the side of her lover.
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sen-
timent, still less with propriety; but he had a
vague idea that the situation was not fortunate.
He retained, however, his presence of mind suffi-
ciently to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say
something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough to
recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power
that would not bear trifling. He then endeavored
to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further,
but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that
there was no provision, nor means of making a
camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this
objection by assuring the party that he was pro-
vided 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.
Oakhurst," said the Innocent, pointing to the Duch-
ess, " and I can shift for myself."
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot
saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of
2
26 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
laughter. As it was, he felt compelled 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 animation she had not shown for
many days. The Innocent was holding forth, ap-
parently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and
Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into
amiability. " Is this yer a d d picnic ? " said
Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the
sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the teth-
ered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea
mingled with the alcoholic fumes that disturbed
his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature,
for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram
his fist into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain,
a slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine-trees,
and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles.
The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine-
boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers
parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so hon-
est and sincere that it might have been heard above
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 27
the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the ma-
levolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned
to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity,
and so turned without a word to the hut. The
fire was replenished, the men lay down before the
door, and in a few minutes were asleep.
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morn-
ing he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred
the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing
strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused
the blood to leave it, snow !
He started to his feet with the intention of
awakening the sleepers, for there was no time to
lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been
lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to
his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the
spot where the mules had been tethered ; they
were no longer there. The tracks were already
rapidly disappearing in the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oak-
hurst back to the fire with his usual calm. He
did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slum-
bered peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored,
freckled face ; the virgin Piney slept beside her
frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended by
celestial guardians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his
blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches
and waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a
whirling mist of snow-flakes, that dazzled and con-
28 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
fused the eye. What could be seen of the land-
scape appeared magically changed. He looked over
the valley, and summed up the present and future
in two words, " snowed in ! "
A careful inventory of the .provisions, which,
fortunately for the party, had been stored within
the hut, and so escaped the felonious fingers of
Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and
prudence they might last ten days longer. " That
is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent,
" if you 're willing to board us. If you ain't and
perhaps you 'd better not you can wait till Uncle
Billy gets back with provisions." For some occult
reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to
disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the
hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp
and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He
dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother
Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their
associate's defection. " They '11 find out the truth
about us all when they find out anything," he
added, significantly, " and there 's no good frighten-
ing them now."
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store
at the disposal of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to
enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion.
" We '11 have a good camp for a week, and then
the snow '11 melt, and we '11 all go back together."
The cheerful gayety of the young man, and Mr.
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 29
Oakhurst's calm infected the others. The Inno-
cent, with the aid of pine-boughs, extemporized a
thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess di-
rected Piney in the rearrangement of the interior
with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of
that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. " I
reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker
Flat," said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharp-
ly to conceal something that reddened her cheeks
through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton
requested Piney not to " chatter." But when Mr.
Oakhurst returned from a weary search for the
trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed
from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and
his thoughts first naturally reverted to the whis-
key, which he had prudently cached. "And yet
it don't somehow sound like whiskey," said the
gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the
blazing fire through the still-blinding storm and
the group around it that he settled to the convic-
tion that it was " square fun."
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards
with the whiskey as something debarred the free
access of the community, I cannot say. It was
certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he " did n't
say cards once " during that evening. Haply the
time was beguiled by an accordion, produced some-
what ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack.
Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the
30 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods
managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from
its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent
on a pair of bone castinets. But the crowning
festivity of the evening was reached in a rude
camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining
hands, sang with great earnestness and vocifera-
tion. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Cove-
nanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any de-
votional quality, caused it speedily to infect the
others, who at last joined in the refrain :
" I 'm 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 Simson, somehow managed to take upon
himself the greater part of that duty. He excused
himself to the Innocent, by saying that he had
"often been a week without sleep." "Doing
what ? " asked Tom. " Poker ! " replied Oakhurst,
sententiously ; " when a man gets a streak of luck,
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 31
nigger-luck, he don't get tired. The luck
gives in first. Luck/' continued the gambler, re-
flectively, " is a mighty queer thing. All you know
about it for certain is that it 's bound to change.
And it's finding out when it's going to change
that makes you. We 've had a streak of bad luck
since we left Poker Flat, you come along, and
slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your
cards right along you 're all right. For," added
the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,
" ' 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 mountain climate that its rays diffused a
kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in
regretful commiseration of the past. But it re-
vealed 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 Po-
ker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it,
and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness,
hurled in that direction a final malediction. It
was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for
32 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
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 flicker-
ing camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the
aching void left by insufficient food, and a new
diversion was proposed by Piney, story-telling.
Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions
caring to relate their personal experiences, this
plan would have failed, too, but for the Innocent.
Some months before he had chanced upon a stray
copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the
Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal
incidents of that poem having thoroughly mas-
tered the argument and fairly forgotten the words
in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And
so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods
again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily
Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines
in the canon seemed to bow to the wrath of the
son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 33
satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in
the fate of "Ash-heels," as the Innocent persisted
in denominating the " swift-footed Achilles."
So with small food and much of Homer and the
accordion, a week passed over the heads of the
outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again
from leaden skies the snow-flakes were sifted over
the land. Day by day closer around them drew
the snowy circle, until at last they looked from
their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white,
that towered twenty feet above their heads. It
became more and more difficult to replenish their
fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now
half hidden in the drifts. And yet no one com-
plained. The lovers turned from the dreary pros-
pect and looked into each other's eyes, and were
happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to
the losing game before him. The Duchess, more
cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of
Piney. Only Mother Shipton once the strong-
est of the party seemed to sicken and fade. At
midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to
her side. " I 'm going," she said, in a voice of
querulous weakness, " but don't say anything about
it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from
under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did
so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the
last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child,"
she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. " You Ve
2* C
34 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
starved yourself," said the gambler. " That 's what
they call it," said the woman, querulously, as she
lay down again, and, turning her face to the wall,
passed quietly away.*
The accordion and the bones were put aside that
day, and Homer was forgotten. When the body
of Mother Shipton had been committed to the
snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and
showed him a pair of snow-shoes, which he had
fashioned from the old pack-saddle. "There 's
one chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said,
pointing to Piney; "but it's there," he added,
pointing toward Poker Flat. "If you can reach
there in two days she 's safe." " And you ? " asked
Tom Simson. " I '11 stay here," was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. " You
are not going, too ? " said the Duchess, as she saw
Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany
him. " As far as the canon," he replied. He
turned suddenly, and kissed the Duchess, leaving
her pallid face aflame, and her trembling limbs
rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought
the storm again and the whirling snow. Then the
Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some one had
quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a
few days longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but
she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning,
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT. 35
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 Duchess's waist They kept this atti-
tude for the rest of the day. That night the storm
reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable
to feed the fire, which gradually died away. As
the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many
hours : " Piney, can you pray ? " " No, dear," said
Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head
upon Piney's shoulder, spoke no more. And so
reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the
head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast,
they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them.
Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine-
boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled
about them as they slept. The moon through the
rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the
camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly
travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle
mercifully flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did
they waken when voices and footsteps broke the
silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
36 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.
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 Poker Flat recognized this, and turned
away, leaving them still locked in each other's
arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the
largest pine-trees, they found the deuce of clubs
pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife. It bore
the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand :
BENEATH THIS TREE
LIES THE BODY
OP
JOHN OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
AND
HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
-I-
And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his
side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as
in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once
the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts
of Poker Flat.
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 vehi-
cle over the roughening road had spoiled the
Judge's last poetical quotation. The tall man be-
side the Judge was asleep, his arm passed through
the swaying strap and his head resting upon it,
altogether a limp, helpless-looking object, as if he
had hanged himself and been cut down too late.
The French lady on the back seat was asleep, too,
yet in a half-conscious propriety of attitude, shown
even in the disposition of the handkerchief which
she held to her forehead and which partially veiled
her face. The lady from Virginia City, travelling
with her husband, had long since lost all indi-
viduality in a wild confusion of ribbons, veils,
furs, and shaw T ls. There was no sound but the
rattling of wheels and the dash of rain upon the
roof. Suddenly the stage stopped and we became
dimly aware of voices. The driver was evidently
in the midst of an exciting colloquy with some
one in the road, a colloquy of which such frag-
ments as " bridge gone," " twenty feet of water,"
38 HIGGLES.
"can't pass," were occasionally distinguishable
above the storm. Then came a lull, and a myste-
rious voice from the road shouted the parting ad-
juration,
" Try Miggles's."
We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehi-
cle slowly turned, of a horseman vanishing through
the rain, and we were evidently on our way to
Miggles's.
Who and where was Higgles ? The Judge, our
authority, did not remember the name, and he
knew the country thoroughly. The Washoe trav-
eller thought Higgles must keep a hotel. We
only knew that we were stopped by high water in
front and rear, and that Higgles was our rock of
refuge. A ten minutes' splashing through a tan-
gled 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 Higgles
did not keep a hotel.
The driver got down and tried the gate. It was
securely locked.
" Higgles ! Higgles ! "
No answer.
"Migg-ells! You Higgles!" continued the
driver, with rising wrath.
" Higglesy ! " joined in the expressman, persua-
sively. "0 Higgy! Migl"
HIGGLES. 39
But no reply came from the apparently insen-
sate Higgles. 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
Higgles."
So we rose up and called on Higgles in chorus ;
then separately. And when we had finished, a
Hibernian fellow-passenger from the roof called
for " Haygells ! " whereat we all laughed. While
we were laughing, the driver cried " Shoo ! "
We listened. To our infinite amazement the
chorus of " Higgles " was repeated from the other
side of the wall, even to the final and supplemen-
tal Haygells."
" Extraordinary echo," said the Judge.
" Extraordinary d d skunk ! " roared the driver,
contemptuously. " Come out of that, Higgles,
and show yourself ! Be a man, Higgles ! Don't
hide in the dark; I would n't if I were you,
Higgles," continued Yuba Bill, now dancing about
in an excess of fury.
" Higgles ! " continued the voice, " Higgles ! "
" Hy good man ! Hr. Hyghail ! " said the Judge,
softening the asperities of the name as much as
possible. " Consider the inhospitality of refusing
40 HIGGLES.
shelter from the inclemency of the weather to
helpless females. Beally, my dear sir " But
a succession of "Higgles," 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 Higgles ? " asked the Judge
of Yuba Bill.
" No, nor don't want to," said Bill, shortly, who
felt the Pioneer Stage Company insulted in his
person by the contumacious 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 fur-
ther extremity ; the walls curiously papered, and
the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque
pattern; somebody sitting in a large arm-chair
HIGGLES. 41
by the fireplace. All this we saw as we crowded
together into the room, after the driver and ex-
pressman.
" Hello, be you Higgles ? " said Yuba Bill to
the solitary occupant.
The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba
Bill walked wrathfully toward it, and turned the
eye of his coach-lantern upon its face. It was a
man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, . with
very large eyes, in which there was that expres-
sion of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had
sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wan-
dered from Bill's face to the lantern, and finally
fixed their gaze on that luminous object, without
further recognition.
Bill restrained himself with an effort.
" Higgles ! Be you deaf ? You ain't dumb
anyhow, you know " ; and Yuba Bill shook the
insensate figure by the shoulder.
To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand,
the venerable stranger apparently collapsed,
sinking into half his size and an undistinguish-
able heap of clothing.
"Well, dern my skin," said Bill, looking ap-
pealingly at us, and hopelessly retiring from the
contest.
The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted
the mysterious invertebrate back into his original
position. Bill was dismissed with the lantern to
42 HIGGLES.
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 au-
thority, and had never lost his conversational
amiability, standing before us with his back to
the hearth, charged us, as an imaginary jury,
as follows :
" It is evident that either our distinguished
friend here has reached that condition described
by Shakespeare as 'the sere and yellow leaf,' or
has suffered some premature abatement of his
mental and physical faculties. Whether he is
really the Higgles "
Here he was interrupted by " Miggles ! Mig-
gles ! Migglesy ! Mig ! " and, in fact, the whole
chorus of Miggles in very much the same key as
it had once before been delivered unto us.
We gazed at each other for a moment in some
alarm. The Judge, in particular, vacated his po-
sition quickly, as the voice seemed to come di-
rectly over his shoulder. The cause, however, was
soon discovered in a large magpie who was
perched upon a shelf over the fireplace, and who
immediately relapsed into a sepulchral silence,
which contrasted singularly with his previous
volubility. It was, undoubtedly, his voice which
we had heard in the road, and our friend in the
chair was not responsible for the discourtesy.
HIGGLES. 43
Yuba Bill, who re-entered the room after an un-
successful search, was loath to accept the explana-
tion, and still eyed the helpless sitter with suspi-
cion. He had found a shed in which he had put
up his horses, but he came back dripping and
sceptical. " Thar ain't nobody but him within
ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar d d old
skeesicks knows it."
But the faith of the majority proved to be se-
curely based. Bill had scarcely ceased growling
before we heard a quick step upon the porch,
the trailing of a wet skirt, the door was flung
open, and with a flash of white teeth, a sparkle
of dark eyes, and an utter absence of ceremony
or diffidence, a young woman entered, shut the
door, and, panting, leaned back against it.
" 0, 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 femi-
nine curves to which it clung ; from the chestnut
crown of whose head, topped by a man's oil-skin
sou'wester, to the little feet and ankles, hid-
den somewhere in the recesses of her boy's bro-
gans, all was grace ; this was Higgles, laughing
at us, too, in the most airy, frank, off-hand man-
ner imaginable.
" You see, boys," said she, quite out of breath,
and holding one little hand against her side, quite
44 HIGGLES.
unheeding the speechless discomfiture of our par-
ty, or the complete demoralization of Yuba Bill,
whose features had relaxed into an expression of
gratuitous and imbecile cheerfulness, " you see,
boys, I was mor'n two miles away when you
passed down the road. I thought you might pull
up here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing
nobody was home but Jim, and and I 'm
out of breath and that lets me out."
And here Higgles caught her dripping oil-skin
hat from her head, with a mischievous swirl that
scattered a shower of rain-drops over us ; at-
tempted to put back her hair ; dropped two hair-
pins in the attempt ; laughed and sat down beside
Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed lightly on her
lap.
The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed
an extravagant compliment.
" I '11 trouble you for that thar har-pin," said
Higgles, gravely. Half a dozen hands were eagerly
stretched forward; the missing hair-pin was re-
stored 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 ex-
pression we had never seen before. Life and in-
telligence seemed to struggle back into the rugged
face. Higgles laughed again, it was a singularly
eloquent laugh, and turned her black eyes and
white teeth once more toward us.
MIGGLES. 45
"This afflicted person is " hesitated the
Judge.
" Jim/' said Higgles.
"Your father?"
-" No."
" Brother ? "
"No."
"Husband?"
Higgles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at
the two lady passengers who I had noticed did
not participate in the general masculine admira-
tion of Higgles, and said, gravely, " No ; it 's
Jim."
There was an awkward pause. The lady pas-
sengers moved closer to each other ; the Washoe
husband looked abstractedly at the fire ; and the
tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for
self-support at this emergency. But Higgles's
laugh, which was very infectious, broke the silence.
" Come," she said briskly, " you must be hungry.
Who '11 bear a hand to help me get tea ? "
She had no lack of volunteers. In a few mo-
ments Yuba Bill was engaged like Caliban in
bearing logs for this Hiranda ; the expressman
was grinding coffee on the veranda ; to myself
the arduous duty of slicing bacon was assigned ;
and the Judge lent each man his good-humored
and voluble counsel. And when Higgles, assisted
by the Judge and our Hibernian " deck passen-
46 HIGGLES.
ger," set the table with all the available crock-
ery, we had become quite joyous, in spite of the
rain that beat against windows, the wind that
whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who
whispered together in the corner, or the magpie"
who uttered a satirical and croaking commentary
on their conversation from his perch above. In
the now bright, blazing fire we could see that
the walls w^ere papered with illustrated journals,
arranged with feminine taste and discrimination.
The furniture was extemporized, and adapted from
candle-boxes and packing-cases, and covered with
gay calico, or the skin of some animal. The
arm-chair of the helpless Jim was an ingenious
variation of a flour-barrel. There was neatness,
and even a taste for the picturesque, to be seen in
the few details of the long low room.
The meal was a culinary success. But more, it
was a social triumph, chiefly, I think, owing to
the rare tact of Higgles in guiding the conversa-
tion, asking all the questions herself, yet bearing
throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of
any concealment on her own part, so that we talked
of ourselves, of our prospects, of the journey, of
the weather, of each other, of everything but
our host and hostess. It must be confessed that
Higgles' s conversation was never elegant, rarely
grammatical, and that at times she employed exple-
tives, the use of which had generally been yielded
MIGGLES. 47
to our sex. But they were delivered with such
a lighting up of teeth and eyes, and were usually
followed 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 sniffling at the door. " That 's Joa-
quin," said Higgles, in reply to our questioning
glances ; " would you like to see him ? " Before we
could answer she had opened the door, and dis-
closed a half-grown grizzly, who instantly raised
himself on his haunches, with his forepaws hang-
ing down in the popular attitude of mendicancy,
and looked admiringly at Higgles, with a very
singular resemblance in his manner to Yuba Bill.
" That 's my watch-dog," said Higgles, in explana-
tion. " 0, he don't bite," she added, as the two
lady passengers fluttered into a corner. " Does he,
old Toppy ? " (the latter remark being Addressed
directly to the sagacious Joaquin.) " I tell you
what, boys," continued Higgles, after she had fed
and closed the door on Ursa Minor, " you were in
big luck that Joaquin was n't hanging round when
you dropped in to-night." " Where was he ? "
asked the Judge. "With me," said Higgles.
" Lord love you ; he trots round with me nights
like as if he was a man."
48 HIGGLES.
We were silent for a few moments, and lis-
tened to the wind. Perhaps we all had the same
picture before us, of Miggles walking through
the rainy woods, with her savage guardian at her
side. The Judge, I remember, said something
about Una and her lion ; but Miggles received it
as she did other compliments, with quiet gravity.
Whether she was altogether unconscious of the
admiration she excited, she could hardly have
been oblivious of Yuba Bill's adoration, I know
not ; but her very frankness suggested a perfect
sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to
the younger members of our party.
The incident of the bear did not add anything
in Miggles's favor to the opinions of those of her
own sex who were present. In fact, the repast
over, a chillness radiated from the two lady pas-
sengers that no pine-boughs brought in by Yuba
Bill and cast as a sacrifice upon the hearth could
wholly overcome. Miggles felt it ; and, suddenly
declaring that it was time to " turn in," offered to
show the ladies to their bed in an adjoining room.
" You, boys, will have to camp out here by the
fire as well as you can," she added, " for thar ain't
but the one room."
Our sex by which, my dear sir, I allude of
course to the stronger portion of humanity has
been generally relieved from the imputation of cu-
riosity, or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am con-
HIGGLES: 49
strained to say, that hardly had the door closed on
Miggles than we crowded together, whispering,
snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions,
surmises, and a thousand speculations in regard to
our pretty hostess and her singular companion. I
fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic,
who sat like a voiceless Memnon in our midst,
gazing with the serene indifference of the Past in
his passionless eyes upon our wordy counsels. In
the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened
again, and Miggles re-entered.
But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a
few hours before had flashed upon us. Her eyes
were downcast, and as she hesitated for a moment
on the threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she
seemed to have left behind her the frank fearless-
ness which had charmed us a moment before.
Coming into the room, she drew a low stool beside
the paralytic's chair, sat down, drew the blanket
over her shoulders, and saying, " If it 's all the same
to you, boys, as we 're rather crowded, I '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 premoni-
tory to more confidential relations, and perhaps
some shame at our previous curiosity, kept us si-
lent. The rain still beat upon the roof, wander-
ing gusts of wind stirred the embers into momen-
tary brightness, until, in a lull of the elements,
3 D
50 HIGGLES.
Higgles suddenly lifted up her head, and, throw-
ing her hair over her shoulder, turned her face
o
upon the group and asked,
" Is there any of you that knows me ? "
There was no reply.
" Think again ! I lived at Marysville in '53.
Everybody knew me there, and everybody had the
right to know me. I kept the Polka Saloon until
I came to live with Jim. That 's six years ago.
Perhaps I've changed some."
The absence of recognition may have discon-
certed her. She turned her head to the fire again,
and it was some seconds before she again spoke,
and then more rapidly :
" Well, you see I thought some of you must
have known me. There 's no great harm done,
anyway. What I was going to say was this : Jim
here " she took his hand in both of hers as she
spoke " used to know me, if you did n't, and
spent a heap of money upon me. I reckon he
spent all he had. And one day it 's six years
ago this winter Jim came into my back room,
sat down on my sofy, like as you see him in that
chair, and never moved again without help. He
was struck all of a heap, and never seemed to
know what ailed him. The doctors came and said
as how it was caused all along of his way of life,
for Jim was mighty free and wild like, and
that he would never get better, and could n't last
HIGGLES. 51
long anyway. 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 popular with everybody, gentle-
men like yourself, sir, came to see me, and I
sold out my business and bought this yer place,
because it was sort of out of the way of travel, you
see, and I brought my baby here."
With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she
had, as she spoke, slowly shifted her position so as
to bring the mute figure of the ruined man be-
tween her and her audience, hiding in the shadow
behind it, as if she offered it as a tacit apology
for her actions. Silent and expressionless, it yet
spoke for her ; helpless, crushed, and smitten with
the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an 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 the hang
of things about yer, for I was used to company
and excitement. I could n't get any woman to
help me, and a man I dursent trust ; but what
with the Indians hereabout, who 'd do odd jobs for
me, and having everything sent from the North
Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through. The
Doctor would run up from Sacramento once in a
52 HIGGLES.
while. He 'd ask to see ' Miggles's baby/ as he
called Jim, and when he 'd go away, he 'd say,
' Higgles ; 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, Higgles, your baby will grow
up to be a man yet and an honor to his mother ;
but not here, Higgles, not here ! ' And I thought
he went away sad, and and " and here Hig-
gles's voice and head were somehow both lost com-
pletely in the shadow.
" The folks about here are very kind," said Hig-
gles, 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 Joaquiri in the
woods yonder one day, when he was n't so high,
and taught him to beg for his dinner ; and then
thai 's Polly that 's the magpie she knows no
end of tricks, and makes it quite sociable of even-
ings with her talk, and so I don't feel like as I
was the only livfng being about the ranch. And
Jim here," said Higgles, with her old laugh again,
and coming out quite into the firelight, " Jim
why, boys, you would admire to see how much he
knows for a man like him. Sometimes I bring
him flowers, and he looks at 'em just as natural as
if he knew 'em ; and times, when we 're sitting
HIGGLES. 53
alone, I read him those things on the wall. Why,
Lord ! " said Higgles, 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 youth-
ful life ? "
"Well, you see," said Higgles, "it would be
playing it rather low down on Jim, to* take advan-
tage 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 rny own
accord."
" But you are young yet and attractive "
" It 's getting late," said Miggles, gravely, " and
you 'd better all turn in. Good-night, boys " ; and,
throwing the blanket over her head, Miggles laid
herself down beside Jim's chair, her head pillowed
on the low stool that held his feet, and spoke no
more. The fire slowly faded from the hearth ; we
each sought our blankets in silence ; and presently
there was no sound in the long -room but the pat-
tering of the rain upon the roof, and the heavy
breathing of the sleepers.
It was nearly morning when I awoke from a
troubled dream. The storm had passed, the stars
were shining, and through the shutterless window
the full moon, lifting itself over the solemn pines
without, looked into the room. It touched the
54 HIGGLES.
lonely figure in the chair with an infinite compas-
sion, and seemed to baptize with a shining flood
the lowly head of the woman whose hair, as in
the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him she
loved. It even lent a kindly poetry to the rugged
outline of Yuba Bill, half reclining on his elbow
between them and his passengers, with savagely
patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And then
I fell asleep and only woke at broad day, with
Yuba Bill standing over me, and "All aboard"
ringing in my ears. .
Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Hig-
gles was gone. We wandered about the house and
lingered long after the horses were harnessed, but
she did not return. It was evident that she wished
to avoid a formal leave-taking, and had so left
us to depart as we had come. After we had helped
the ladies into the coach, we returned to the house
and solemnly shook hands with the paralytic Jim,
as solemnly settling him back into position after
each hand-shake. Then we looked for the last
time around the long low room, at the stool where
Higgles had sat, and slowly took our seats in the
waiting coach. The whip cracked, and we were
off!
But as we reached the high-road, Bill's dexterous
hand laid the six horses back on their haunches,
and the stage stopped with a jerk. Tor there, on
a little eminence beside the road, stood Higgles,
HIGGLES. 55
her hair flying, her eyes sparkling, her white hand-
kerchief waving, and her white teeth flashing a
last "good-by." We waved our hats in return.
And then Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fasci-
nation, madly lashed his horses forward, and we
sank back in our seats. We exchanged not a word
until we reached the North Fork, and the stage
drew up at the Independence House. Then, the
Judge leading, we walked into the bar-room and
took our places gravely at the bar.
" Are your glasses charged, gentlemen ? " said
the Judge, solemnly taking off his white hat.
They were.
" Well, then, here 's to Higgles, GOD BLESS
HER ! "
Perhaps He had. Who knows ?
TENNESSEE'S PAETKER
I DO not think that we ever knew his real
name. Our ignorance of it certainly never
gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar
in 1854 most men were christened anew. Some-
times these appellatives were derived from some
distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of " Dunga-
ree Jack " ; or from some peculiarity of habit, as
shown in " Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue
proportion of that chemical in his daily bread ; or
from some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron
Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who earned that
baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation
of the term "iron pyrites." Perhaps this may
have been the beginning of a rude heraldry ; but
I am constrained to think that it was because a
man's real name in that day rested solely upon
his own unsupported statement. "Call yourself
Clifford, do you ? " said Boston, addressing a timid
new-comer with infinite scorn; "hell is full of
such Cliffords ! " He then introduced the unfortu-
nate man, whose name happened to be really Clif-
ford, as " Jay-bird Charley," an unhallowed inspi-
ration of the moment, that clung to him ever after.
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 57
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 at-
tracted by a young person who waited upon the
table at the hotel where he took his meals. One
morning he said something to her which caused her
to smile not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly
break a plate of toast over his upturned, serious,
simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. He fol-
lowed her, and emerged a few moments later, cov-
ered with more toast and victory. That day week
they were married by a Justice of the Peace, and
returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something
more might be made of this episode, but I prefer
to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar, in the
gulches and bar-rooms, where all sentiment was
modified by a strong sense of humor.
Of their married felicity but little is known,
perhaps for the reason that Tennessee, then living
with his partner, one day took occasion to say
something to the bride on his own account, at
which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly and
chastely retreated, this time as far as Marysville,
where Tennessee followed her, and where they
went to housekeeping without the aid of a Justice
3*
58 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.
of the Peace. Tennessee's Partner took the loss of
his wife simply and seriously, as was his fashion.
But to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one
day returned from Marysville, without his partner's
wife, she having smiled and retreated with 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 canon to see
the shooting were naturally indignant. Their in-
dignation 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
difficulty.
Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee
had grown up on the Bar. He was known to be a
gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. In
these suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally
compromised; his continued intimacy with Ten-
nessee after the affair above quoted could only be
accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership
of crime. At last Tennessee's guilt became fla-
grant. One day he overtook a stranger on his way
to Eed Dog. The stranger afterward related that
Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting anec-
dote and reminiscence, but illogically concluded
the interview in the following words : " And now,
young man, I '11 trouble you for your knife, your
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 59
pistols, and your money. You see your weppings
might get you into trouble at Eed 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. Eed Dog and Sandy
Bar made common cause against the highwayman.
Tennessee was hunted in very much the same fash-
ion 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 Canon ; but
at its farther extremity he was stopped by a small
man on a gray horse. The men looked at each
other a moment in silence. Both were fearless,
both self-possessed and independent; and both
types of a civilization that in the seventeenth
century would have been called heroic, but, in the
nineteenth, simply " reckless." " What have you
got there ? I call," said Tennessee, quietly. " Two
bowers and an ace," said the stranger, as quietly,
showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife. " That
takes me," returned Tennessee ; and with this
gamblers' epigram, he threw away his useless pis-
tol, and rode back with his captor.
It was a warm night. The cool breeze which
60 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.
usually sprang up with the going down of the sun
behind the chaparral-crested, mountain was that
evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little
canon was stifling with heated resinous odors, and
the decaying drift-wood on the Bar sent forth faint,
sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day,
and its fierce passions, still filled the camp. Lights
moved restlessly along the bank of the river, strik-
ing no answering reflection from its tawny current.
Against the blackness of the pines the windows
of the old loft above the express-office stood out
staringly bright; and through their curtainless
panes the loungers below could see the forms of
those who were even then deciding the fate of
Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the
dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and pas-
sionless, crowned with remoter passionless stars.
The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly
as was consistent with a judge and jury who felt
themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in
their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest
and indictment. The law of Sandy Bar was im-
placable, but not vengeful. The excitement and
personal feeling of the chase were over ; with Ten-
nessee safe in their hands they were ready to listen
patiently to any defence, which they were already
satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt
in their own minds, they were willing to give the
prisoner the benefit of any that might exist. Se-
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 61
cure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged,
on general principles, they indulged him with more
latitude of defence than his reckless hardihood
seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be more
anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise uncon-
cerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in the re-
sponsibility he had created. " I don't take any
hand in this yer game," had been his invariable,
but good-humored reply to all questions. The
Judge who was also his captor for a moment
vaguely regretted that he had not shot him " on
sight," that morning, but presently dismissed this
human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind.
Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door,
and it was said that Tennessee's Partner was
there on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted at
once without question. Perhaps the younger mem-
bers of the jury, to whom the proceedings were
becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as a
relief.
For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure.
Short and stout, with a square face, sunburned
into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck
"jumper," and trousers streaked and splashed
with red soil, his aspect under any circumstances
w T ould have been quaint, and was now even ridicu-
lous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy
carpet-bag he was carrying, it became obvious,
from partially developed legends and inscriptions,
62 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER,
that the material with which his trousers had been
patched had been originally intended for a less
ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great
gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each
person in the room with labored cordiality, he
wiped his serious, perplexed face on a red bandanna
handkerchief, a shade lighter than his complexion,
laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady
himself, and thus addressed the Judge :
" I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology,
" and I thought I 'd just step in and see how things
was gittin' on with Tennessee thar, my pardner.
It 's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather
before on the Bar."
He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering
any other meteorological recollection, he again had
recourse to his pocket-handkerchief, and for some
moments mopped his face diligently.
" Have you anything to say in behalf of the
prisoner ? " said the Judge, finally.
" Thet 's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone
of relief. " I come yar as Tennessee's pardner,
knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet
and dry, in luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't
allers my. ways, but thar ain't any p'ints in that
young man, thar ain't any liveliness as he 's been up .
to, as I don't know. And you sez to rue, sez you,
confidential-like, and between man and man, sez
you, ' Do you know anything in his behalf ? ' and I
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 63
sez to you, sez I, confidential-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 Partner.
" It ain't for me to say anything agin' him. And
now, what 's the case ? Here 's Tennessee wants
money, wants it bad, and does n't like to ask it of
his old pardner. Well, what does Tennessee do ?
He lays for a stranger, and he fetches that stranger.
And you lays for him, and you fetches him ; and
the honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein' a
far-minded man, and to you, gentlemen, all, as
far-minded men, ef this is n't so."
" Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, " have
you .any questions to ask this man ? "
" No ! no ! " continued Tennessee's Partner,
hastily. " I play this yer hand alone. To come
down to the bed-rock, it 's just this : Tennessee,
thar, has played it pretty rough and expensive-
like on a stranger, and on this yer camp. And
now, what 's the fair thing ? Some would say
more ; some would say less. Here 's seventeen
hundred dollars in coarse gold and a watch, it 's
about all my pile, and call it square ! " And
before a hand could be raised to prevent him, he
64 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.
had emptied the contents of the carpet-bag upon
the table.
For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or
two men sprang to their feet, several hands groped
for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to " throw
him from the window " was only overridden by a
gesture from the Judge. Tennessee laughed. And
apparently oblivious of the excitement, 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 forcible figures
and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offence could not be
condoned by money, his face took a more serious
and sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest
to him noticed that his rough hand trembled
slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as
he slowly returned the gold to the carpet-bag, as
if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated
sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and
was perplexed with the belief that he had not
offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge,
and saying, " This yer is a lone hand, played alone,
and without my pardner," he bowed to the jury
and was about to withdraw, when the Judge called
him back. " If you have anything to say to Ten-
nessee, you had better say it now." For the first
time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 65
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 hand-
kerchief, and without another word withdrew.
The two men never again met each other alive.
For the unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to
Judge Lynch who, whether bigoted, weak, or
narrow, w~as at least incorruptible firmly fixed
in the mind of that mythical personage any waver-
ing determination of Tennessee's fate ; and at the
break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to
meet it at the top of Marley's Hill.
How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused
to say anything, how perfect were the arrange-
ments of the committee, were all duly reported,
with the addition of a warning moral and example
to all future evil-doers, in the Eed Dog Clarion,
by its editor, who was present, and" to whose
vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader.
But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the
blessed amity of earth and air and sky, the
awakened life of the free woods and hills, the
joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above
all, the infinite Serenity that thrilled through each,
was not reported, as not being a part of the social
lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed
E
66 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.
was done, and a life, with, its possibilities and re-
sponsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen
thing that dangled between earth and sky, the
birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the sun shone,
as cheerily as before ; and possibly the Eed Dog
Clarion was right.
Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that
surrounded the ominous tree. But as they turned
to disperse attention was drawn to the singular
appearance of a motionless donkey-cart halted at
the side of the road. As they approached, they at
once recognized the venerable " Jenny " and the
two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's
Partner^ used by him in carrying dirt from his
claim ; and a few paces distant the owner of the
equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye-tree,
wiping the perspiration from his glowing face. In
answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for
the body of the " diseased," " if it was all the
same to the committee." He did n't wish to
" hurry anything " ; he could " wait." He was not
working that day ; and when the gentlemen were
done with the "diseased," he would take him.
" Ef thar is any present," he added, in his simple,
serious way, " as would care to jine in the fun'l,
they kin come." Perhaps it was from a sense of
humor, which I have already intimated was a
feature of Sandy Bar, perhaps it was from some-
thing even better than that ; but two thirds of
the loungers accepted the invitation at once.
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 67
It was noon when the body, of Tennessee was
delivered into the hands of his partner. As the
cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it
contained a rough, oblong box, apparently made
from a section of sluicing, and half filled with
bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was fur-
ther decorated with slips of willow, and made
fragrant with buckeye-blossoms. When the body
was deposited in the box, Tennessee's Partner drew
over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely
mounting the narrow seat in front, with his feet
upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward.
The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous
pace which was habitual with " Jenny " even un-
der less solemn circumstances. The men half
curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly
: strolled along beside the cart ; some in advance,
some a little in the rear of the homely catafalque.
But, whether from the narrowing of the road or
some present sense of decorum, as the cart passed
on, the company fell to the rear in couples, keep-
ing step, and otherwise assuming the external show
of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had
at the outset played a funeral march in dumb
show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted, from
a lack of sympathy and appreciation, not hav-
ing, perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to be
content with the enjoyment of his own fun.
The way led through Grizzly Canon, by this
68 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.
time clothed in funereal drapery and shadows.
The redwoods, burying their moccasoned feet in
the red soil, stood in Indian-file along the track,
trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending
boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised
into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating
in the ferns by the roadside, as the cortege went
by. Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook
from higher boughs ; and the blue-jays, spreading
their wings, fluttered before them like outriders,
until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were reached,
and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.
Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it
would not have been a cheerful place. The un-
picturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,
the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-
building of the California miner, were all here,
with the dreariness of decay superadded. A few
paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure,
which, in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's
matrimonial felicity, had been used as a garden,
but was now overgrown with fern. As we ap-
proached 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 through-
out, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 69
his back, and deposited 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 variously on stumps
and boulders, and sat expectant.
"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner,
slowly, " has been running free all day, what 's the
natural thing for him to do ? Why, to come
home. And if he ain't in a condition to go home,
what can his best friend do ? Why, bring him
home ! And here 's Tennessee has been running
free, and we brings him home from his wander-
ing." He paused, and picked up a fragment of
quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and
went on : " It ain't the first time that I Ve packed
him on my back, as you see'd me now. It ain't
the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin
when he could n't help himself ; it ain't the first
time that I and ' Jinny ' have waited for him on
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 ;
70 TENNESSEE'S PARTNER.
and my thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for
your trouble."
Eesisting any proffers of assistance, he began to
fill in the grave, turning his back upon the crowd,
that after a few moments' hesitation gradually
withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that
hid Sandy Bar from view, some, looking back,
thought they could see Tennessee's Partner, his
work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel 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 face from his
handkerchief at that distance ; and this point re-
mained undecided.
In the reaction that followed the feverish ex-
citement of that day, Tennessee's Partner was not
forgotten. A secret investigation had cleared him
of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left
only a suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar
made a point of calling on him, and proffering
various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses. But
from that day his rude health and great strength
seemed visibly to decline; and when the rainy
season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were
beginning to peep from the rocky mound above
Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed.
One night, when the pines beside the cabin
were swaying in the storm, and trailing their
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER. 71
slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and
rush of the swollen river were heard below, Ten-
nessee's Partner lifted his head from the pillow,
saying, " It is time to go for Tennessee ; I must
put ' Jinny ' in the cart " ; and would have risen
from his bed but for the restraint of his attendant.
Struggling, he still pursued his singular fancy :
"There, now, steady, 'Jinny,' steady, old girl.
How dark it is ! Look out for the ruts, and look
out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes, you know,
when he 's blind drunk, he drops down right in the
trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top
of the hill. Thar I told you so ! thar he is,
coming this way, too, all by himself, sober,
and his face a-shining. Tennessee ! Pardner ! "
And so they met.
THE IDYL OF BED GULCH.
SANDY was very drunk. He was lying under
an azalea-bush, in pretty much the same atti-
tude in which he had fallen some hours before.
How long he had been lying there he could not
tell, and did n't care ; how long he should lie
there was a matter equally indefinite and un-
considered. 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 Eed Gulch to attract
attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist
had erected a temporary tombstone at Sandy's
head, bearing the inscription, " Effects of McCor-
kle's whiskey, kills at forty rods," with a hand
pointing to McCorkle's saloon. But this, I im-
agine, was, like most local satire, personal ; and
was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process
rather than a commentary upon the impropriety
of the result. With this facetious exception, Sandy
had been undisturbed. A wandering mule, released
from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage be-
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 73
side 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 himself up at
his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in the
sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was
ingenious and dog-like in its implied flattery of
the unconscious man beside him.
Meanwhile the shadows of the pine-trees had
slowly swung around until they crossed the road,
and their trunks barred the open meadow with
gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little
puffs of red dust, lifted by the plunging hoofs of
passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon
the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and
lower ; and still Sandy stirred not. And then the
repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other
philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an
unphilosophical sex.
" Miss Mary," as she was known to the little
flock that she had just dismissed from the log
school-house beyond the pin'es, was taking her
afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine
cluster of blossoms on the azalea-bush opposite,
she crossed the road to pluck it, picking her way
through the red dust, not without certain fierce lit-
tle shivers of disgust, and some feline circumlocu-
tion. And then she came suddenly upon Sandy !
Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of
74 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.
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 gath-
ered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither
sound nor motion came from the bush. With
one little foot she then overturned the satirical
head-board, and muttered " Beasts ! " an epithet
which probably, at that moment, conveniently
classified in her mind the entire male population
of Bed Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed
of certain rigid notions of her own, had not, per-
haps, properly appreciated the demonstrative gal-
lantry for which the Calif ornian has been so justly
celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as
a new-comer, perhaps, fairly earned the reputation
of being " stuck up."
As she stood there she noticed, also, that the
slant sunbeams were heating Sandy's head to what
she judged to be an unhealthy temperature, and
that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To
pick it up and to place it over his face was a work
requiring some courage, particularly as his eyes
were open. Yet she did it and made good her re-
treat. But she was somewhat concerned, on look-
ing back, to see that the hat was removed, and
that Sandy was sitting up and saying something.
The truth was, that in the calm depths of San-
dy's mind he was satisfied that the rays of the
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 75
sun were beneficial and healthful ; that from
childhood he had objected to lying down in a
hat ; that no people but condemned fools, past re-
demption, ever wore hats ; and that his right to
dispense with them when he pleased was inalien-
able. This was the statement of his inner con-
sciousness. Unfortunately, its outward expression
was vague, being limited to a repetition of the
following formula, " Su'shine all ri' ! Wasser
ma'ar, 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.
" 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 for-
ward a few paces and then stopped.
" Wass I go home for ? " he suddenly asked,
with great gravity.
" Go and take a bath," replied Miss Mary, eying
his grimy person with great disfavor.
To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled
off his coat and vest, threw them on the ground,
kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly forward,
darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of
the river.
76 THE IDYL OF BED GULCH.
" Goodness Heavens ! the man will be
drowned ! " said Miss Mary ; ancl then, with femi-
nine inconsistency, she ra.n back to the school-
house, and locked herself in.
That night, while seated at supper with her
hostess, the blacksmith's wife, it came to Miss
Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got
drunk. "Abner," responded Mrs. Stidger, re-
flectively, " let 's see : Abner has n't been tight
since last lection." Miss Mary would have liked
to ask if he preferred lying in the sun on these
occasions, and if a cold bath would have hurt him ;
but this would have involved an explanation,
which she did not then care to give. So she con-
tented herself with opening her gray eyes widely
at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger, a fine speci-
men of Southwestern efflorescence, and then dis-
missed the subject altogether. The next day she
wrote to her dearest friend, in Boston : " I think
I find the intoxicated portion of this community
the least objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the
men, of course. I do not know anything that
could make the women tolerable." ,
In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten j
this episode, except that her afternoon walks took
thereafter, almost unconsciously, another direc-
tion. She noticed, however, that every morn-
ing a fresh cluster of azalea-blossoms appeared
among the flowers on her desk. This was not
THE IDYL OF BED GULCH. 77
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, they, one and all, professed
ignorance of the azaleas. A few days later, Mas-
ter Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to
the window, was suddenly taken with spasms
of apparently gratuitous laughter, that threatened
the discipline of the school. All that Miss Mary
could get from him was, that some one had been
" looking in the winder." Irate and indignant, she
sallied from her hive to do battle with the intrud-
er. As she turned the corner of the school-house
she came plump upon the quondam drunkard,
now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly sheepish
and guilty-looking.
These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a
feminine advantage of, in her present humor. But
it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that
the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissi-
pation, was amiable-looking, in fact, a kind of
blond Samson, whose corn-colored, silken beard
apparently had never yet known the touch of bar-
ber'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 apology with supercili-
ous eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontarn-
ination. When she re-entered the school-room,
78 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.
her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of
revelation. And then she laughed, and the lit-
tle people all laughed, and they were all uncon-
sciously very happy..
It was on a hot day and not long after this
that two short-legged boys came to grief on the
threshold of the school with a pail of water, which
they had laboriously brought from the spring, and
that Miss Mary compassionately seized the pail
and started for the spring herself. At the foot of
the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-
shirted arm dexterously, but gently relieved her
of her burden. Miss Mary was both embarrassed
and angry. " If you carried more of that for your-
self," she said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without
deigning to raise her lashes to its owner, " you 'd
do better." In the submissive silence that 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 bar-
rel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and
as mysteriously filled with fresh spring-water
every morning.
Nor was this superior young person without
other quiet attentions. " Profane Bill," driver of
the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the
newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably of-
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 79
fering 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, afterward threw a decanter at the
head of a confederate for mentioning her name in
a bar-room. The over-dressed mother of a pupil
whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered
near this astute Vestal's temple, never daring to
enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship
the priestess from afar. .
With such unconscious intervals the monoto-
nous procession of blue skies, glittering sunshine,
brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Eed
Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the
sedate and proper woods. Perhaps she believed,
with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of the
firs " did her chest good," for certainly her slight
cough was less frequent and her step was firmer ;
perhaps she had learned the unending lesson which
the patient pines are never weary of repeating to
heedful or listless ears. ' And so, one day, she
planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and took the
children with her. Away from the dusty road,
the straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the
clamor of restless engines, the cheap finery of shop-
windows, thedeeper glitter of paint and colored
glass, and the thin veneering which barbarism
80 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.
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 per-
haps because they had not yet grown quite away
from the breast of the bounteous Mother threw
themselves face downward on her brown bosom
with uncouth caresses, filling the air with their
laughter; and how Miss Mary herself felinely
fastidious and intrenched as she was in the purity
of spotless skirts, collar, and- cuffs forgot all, and
ran like a crested quail at the head of her brood,
until, romping, laughing, and panting, with a
loosened braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a
knotted ribbon from her throat, she came suddenly
and violently, in the heart of the forest, upon
the luckless Sandy !
The explanations, apologies, and not overwise
conversation that ensued, need not be indicated
here. It would seem, however, that Miss Mary-
had already established some acquaintance with
this ex-dnmkard. Enough that he was soon ac-
cepted as one of the party ; that the children, with
that quick intelligence which Providence gives the
helpless, recognized a friend, and played with his
blond beard, and long silken mustache, and took
other liberties, as the helpless are apt to do.
And when he had built a fire against a tree, and
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 81
had shown them other mysteries of wood-craft,
their admiration knew no bounds. At the close
of two such foolish, idle, happy hours he found
himself ' lying at the feet of the schoolmistress,
gazing dreamily in her face, as she sat upon the
sloping hillside, weaving wreaths of laurel and
syringa, in very much the same attitude as he
had lain w^hen first they met. Nor was the simili-
tude greatly forced. The weakness of an easy,
sensuous nature, that had found a dreamy exalta-
tion in liquor, it is to be feared was now finding
an equal intoxication in love.
I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this
himself. I know that he longed to be doing some-
thing, slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage, or
sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of
this sallow-faced, gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I
should like to present him in a heroic attitude, I
stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment,
being only withheld from introducing such an
episode by a strong conviction that it does not
usually occur at such times. And I trust that my
fairest reader, who remembers that, in a real crisis,
it is always some uninteresting stranger or unro-
mantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who rescues,
will forgive the omission.
So they sat there, undisturbed, the woodpeck-
ers chattering overhead, and the voices of the chil-
dren coming pleasantly from the hollow below.
4* F
82 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.
What they said matters little. 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 excite-
ment ; how he had lived a wild life, and how he
was trying to reform; and other details, which,
from a woodpecker's view-point, undoubtedly must
have seemed stupid, and a waste of time. But
even in such trifles was the afternoon spent ; and
when the children were again gathered, and Sandy,
with a delicacy which the schoolmistress well un-
derstood, took leave of them quietly at the out-
skirts 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 Eed Gulch to use a local
euphuism "dried up" also. In another day
Miss Mary would be free ; and for a season, at
least, Eed Gulch would know her no more. She
was seated alone in the school-house, her cheek
resting on her hand, her eyes half closed in one
of those day-dreams in which Miss Mary I fear,
to the danger of school discipline was lately in
the habit of indulging. Her lap was full of
mosses, ferns, and other woodland memories. She
was so preoccupied with these and her own
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 83
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 door. On the threshold
stood a woman, the self-assertion and audacity of
whose dress were in singular contrast to her timid,
irresolute bearing.
Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious
mother of her anonymous pupil. Perhaps she was
disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious ; but
as she coldly invited her to enter, she half un-
consciously settled her white cuffs and collar, and
gathered closer her own chaste skirts. It was,
perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed
stranger, after a moment's hesitation, left her gor-
geous parasol open and sticking in the dust beside
the door, and then sat down at the farther end
of a long bench. Her voice was husky as she
began :
" I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the
Bay to-morrow, and I could n't let you go until
I came to thank you for your kindness to my
Tommy."
Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and
deserved more than the poor attention she could
give him.
" Thank you, miss ; thank ye !" cried the stran-
ger, brightening even through the color which
84 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.
Red Gulch knew facetiously as her " war paint,"
and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the
long bench nearer the schoolmistress. "I thank
you, miss, for that ! and if I am his mother, there
ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him.
And if I ain't much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter,
dearer, angeler teacher lives than he 's got."
Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with
a ruler over her shoulder, opened her gray eyes
widely at this, but said nothing.
" It ain't for you to be complimented by the like
of me, I know," she went on, hurriedly. " It
ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to
do it, either ; but I come to ask a favor, not
for me, miss, not for me, but for the darling
boy."
Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmis-
tress's eye, and putting her lilac-gloved hands to-
gether, the fingers downward, between her knees,
she went on, in a low voice :
" You see, miss, there 's no one the boy has any
claim on but me, and I ain't the proper person to
bring him up. I thought some, last year, of send-
ing him away to 'Frisco to school, but when they
talked of bringing a schoolma'am here, I waited
.till I saw you, and then I knew it was all right,
and I could keep my boy a little longer. And 0,
miss, he loves you so much ; and if you could
hear him talk about you, in his pretty way, and if
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 85
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 humil-
ity, " it 's natural that he should take to you,
miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a
gentleman, and the boy must forget me, sooner
or later, and so I ain't a goin' to cry about that.
For I come to ask you to take my Tommy, God
bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives,
to to take him with you."
She had risen and caught the young girl's hand
in her own, and had fallen on her knees beside her.
" I 've money plenty, and it 's all yours and his.
Put him in some good school, where you can go
and see him, and help him to to to forget his
mother. Do with him what you like. The worst
you can do will be kindness to what he will learn
with me. Only take him out of this wicked
life, this cruel place, this home of shame and sor-
row. You will; I know you will, won't you?
You will, you must not, you cannot say no !
You will make him as pure, as gentle as yourself;
and when he has grown up, you will tell him his
father's name, the name that has n't passed my
lips for years, the name of Alexander Morton,
whom they call here Sandy ! Miss Mary ! do
not take your hand away ! Miss Mary, speak to
me ! You will take my boy ? Do not put your
86 THE IDYL OF RED GULCH.
face from me. I know it ought not to look on such
as me. Miss Mary ! my God, be merciful !
she is leaving me ! "
Miss Mary had risen, and, in the gathering twi-
light, had felt her way to the open window. She
stood there, leaning against the casement, her eyes
fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading from
the western sky. There was still some of its light
on her pure young forehead, on her white collar,
on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly
away. The suppliant had dragged herself, still on
her knees, beside her.
" I know it takes time to consider. I will wait
here all night ; but I cannot go until you speak.
Do not deny me now. You will ! I see it in
your sweet face, such a face as I have seen in
my dreams. I see it in your eyes, Miss Mary !
you will take my boy ! "
The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss
Mary's eyes with something of its glory, flickered,
and faded, and went out. The sun had set on Eed
Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's
voice sounded pleasantly.
" I will take the boy. Send him to .me to-
night."
The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Ma-
ry'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.
THE IDYL OF RED GULCH. 87
" Does this man know of your intention ? "
asked Miss Mary, suddenly.
" No, nor cares. He has never even seen the
child to know it."
" Go to him at once, to-night, now ! Tell
him what you have done. Tell him I have taken
his child, and tell him he must never see see
the child again. Wherever it may be, he must
not come ; wherever I may take it, he must not
follow ! There, go now, please, I 'm weary, and
have much yet to do ! "
They walked together to the door. On the
threshold the woman turned.
" Good night."
She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But
at the same moment the young girl reached out
her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own pure
breast for one brief moment, and then closed and
locked the door.
It was with a sudden sense of great responsi-
bility that Profane Bill took the reins of the^ Slum-
gullion Stage the next morning, for the school-
mistress was one of his passengers. As he en-
tered the high-road, in obedience to a pleasant
voice from the "inside," he suddenly reined up
his horses and respectfully waited, as " Tommy "
hopped out at the command of Miss Mary.
" Not that bush, Tommy, the next."
88 THE IDYL OF BED GULCH.
Tommy whipped out his new pocket-knife, and,
cutting a branch from a tall azalea-bush, returned
with it to Miss Mary.
" All right now ? "
"All right."
And the stage-door closed on the Idyl of Eed
Gulch.
HIGH-WATER MAEK.
WHEN" the tide was out on the Dedlow
Marsh, its extended dreariness was patent.
Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools,
and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-
like, toward the open bay, were all hard facts. So
were the few green tussocks, with their scant
blades, their amphibious flavor, and unpleasant
dampness. And if you choose to indulge your
fancy, although the flat monotony of the Ded-
low Marsh was not inspiring, the wavy line of
scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness
of the spent waters, and made the dead certainty
of the returning tide a gloomy reflection, which no
present sunshine could dissipate. The greener
meadow-land seemed oppressed with this idea, and
mads no positive attempt at vegetation until the
work of reclamation should be complete. In the
bitter fruit of the low cranberry-bushes one might
fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition
curdled and soured by an injudicious course of too
much regular cold water.
The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was
also melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral
90 HIGH-WATER MARK.
boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the
scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrel-
some teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the
startled crane, and syllabled complaint of the
" killdeer " plover were beyond the power of writ-
ten expression. Nor was the aspect of these
mournful fowls at all cheerful and inspiring. Cer-
tainly not the blue peron standing midleg deep
in the water, obviously catching cold in a reckless
disregard of wet feet and consequences ; nor the
mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-
spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his
suicidal contemplation ; nor the impassive king-
fisher an ornithological Marius reviewing the
desolate expanse ; nor the black raven that went
to and fro over the face of the marsh continu-
ally, but evidently could n't make up his mind
whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-
spirited in the reflection that, after all this trouble,
he would n't be able to give a definite answer.
On the contrary, it was evident at a glance that
the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told un-
pleasantly on the birds, and that the season of
migration was looked forward to with a feeling of
relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of
extravagant anticipation by the callow, brood. But
if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless at the slack of the
low tide, you should have seen it when the tide
was strong and full. When the damp air blew
HIGH- WATER MARK. 91
chilly over the cold, glittering expanse., and came
to the faces of those who looked seaward like
another tide ; when a steel-like glint marked the
low hollows and the sinuous line of slough ; when
the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees
arose again, and went forth on their dreary, pur-
poseless wanderings, drifting hither and thither,
but getting no farther toward any goal at the fall-
ing tide or the day's decline than the cursed He-
brew in the legend ; when the glossy ducks swung
silently, making neither ripple nor furrow on the
shimmering surface ; when the fog came in with
the tide and shut out the blue above, even as the
green below had been obliterated ; when boatmen,
lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way,
started at what seemed the brushing of mermen's
fingers on the boat's keel, or shrank from the tufts
of grass spreading around like the floating hair of
a corpse, and knew by these signs that they were
lost upon Dedlow Marsh, and must make a night
of it, and a gloomy one at that, then you might
know something of Dedlow Marsh at high water.
Let me recall a story connected with this latter
view which never failed to recur to my % mind in
my long gunning excursions upon Dedlow Marsh.
Although the event was briefly recorded in the
county paper, I had the story, in all its eloquent
detail, from the lips of the principal actor. I can-
not hope to catch the varying emphasis and pecu-
92 HIGH-WATER MARK.
liar coloring of feminine delineation, for my nar-
rator was a woman ; but I '11 try to give at least
its substance.
She lived midway of the great slough of Ded-
low Marsh and a good-sized river, which de-
bouched four miles beyond into an estuary formed
by the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy penin-
sula which constituted the southwestern boundary
of a noble bay. The house in which she lived
was a small frame cabin raised from the marsh
a few feet by stout piles, and was three miles dis-
tant from the settlements upon the river. Her
husband was a logger, a profitable business in
a county where the principal occupation was the
manufacture of lumber.
It was the season of early spring, when her hus-
band left on the ebb of a high tide, with a raft of
logs for the usual transportation to the lower end
of the bay. As she stood by the door of the lit-
tle cabin when the voyagers departed she noticed
a cold look in the southeastern sky, and she re-
membered hearing her husband say to his com-
panions that they must endeavor to complete
their voyage before the coming of the southwest-
erly gale which he saw brewing. And that night
it began to storm and blow harder than she had
ever before experienced, and some great trees fell
in -the forest by the river, and the house rocked
like her baby's cradle.
HIGH-WATER MARK. 93
But however the storm might roar about the
little cabin, she knew that one she trusted had
driven bolt and bar with his own strong hand,
and that had he feared for her he would not
have left her. This, and her domestic duties, and
the care of her little sickly baby, helped to keep
her mind from dwelling on the weather, except, of
course, to hope that he was safely harbored with
the logs at Utopia in the dreary distance. But
she noticed that day, when she went out to feed
the chickens and look after the cow, that the
tide was up to the little fence of their garden-
patch, and the roar of the surf on the south
beach, though miles away, she could hear dis-
tinctly. And she began to think that she would
like to have some one to talk with about mat-
ters, and she believed that if it had not been so
far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable,
she would have taken the baby and have gone
over to Byckman's, her nearest neighbor. But
then, you see, he might have returned in the
storm, all wet, with no one to see to him ; and it
was a long exposure for baby, who was croupy
and ailing.
But that night, she never could tell why, she
did n't feel like sleeping or even lying down. The
storm had somewhat abated, but she still " sat and
sat," and even tried to read. I don't know whether
it was a Bible or some profane magazine that this
94 HIGH-WATER MARK.
poor woman read, but most probably the latter, for
the words all ran together and made such sad non-
sense that she was forced at last to put the book
down and turn to that dearer volume which lay
before her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf
as yet unsoiled, and try to look forward to its mys-
terious future. And, rocking the cradle, she thought
of everything and everybody, but still was wide
awake as ever.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last
laid down in her clothes. How long she slept she
could not remember, but she aw r oke with a dread-
ful choking in her throat, and found herself stand-
ing, trembling all over, in the middle of the room,
with her baby clasped to her breast, and she was
" saying something." The baby cried and sobbed,
and she walked up and down trying to hush it,
when she heard a scratching at the door. She
opened it fearfully, and was glad to see it was
only old Pete, their dog, who crawled, dripping
with water, into the room. She would like to
have looked out, not in the faint hope of her hus-
band's coming, but to see how things looked ; but
the wind shook the door so savagely that she could
hardly hold it. Then she sat down a little while,
and then walked up and down a little while, and
then she lay down again a little while. Lying
close by the wall of the little cabin, she thought
she heard once or twice something scrape slowly
HIGH-WATER MARK. 95
against the clapboards, like the scraping of branches.
Then there was a little gurgling sound, "like the
baby made when it was swallowing " ; then some-
thing went " click-click " and " cluck-cluck," so
that she sat up in bed. When she did so she was
attracted by something else that seemed creeping
from the back door towards the centre of the room.
It was n't much wider than her little finger, but
soon it swelled to the width of her hand, and be-
gan spreading all over the floor. It was water.
She ran to the front door and threw it wide
open, and saw nothing but water. She ran to the
back door and threw it open, and saw nothing'but
water. She ran to the side window, and, throwing
that open, she saw nothing but water. Then she
remembered hearing her husband once say that
there was no danger in the tide, for that fell regu-
larly, and people could calculate on it, and that he
would rather live near the bay than the river,
whose banks might overflow at any time. But
was it the tide ? So she ran again to the back
door, and threw out a stick of wood. It drifted
away towards the bay. She scooped up some of
the water and put it eagerly to her lips. It was
fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not the
tide!
It was then 0, God be praised for his good-
ness ! she did neither faint nor fall ; it was then
blessed be the Saviour for it was his merciful
96 HIGH- WATER MARK.
hand that touched and strengthened her in this
awful moment that fear dropped from her like
a garment, and her trembling ceased. It was then
and thereafter that she never lost her self-com-
mand, through all the trials of that gloomy night.
She drew the bedstead towards the middle of
the room, and placed a table upon it and on that
she put the cradle. The water on the floor was
already over her ankles, and the house once or
twice moved so perceptibly, and seemed to be
racked so, that the closet doors all flew open.
Then she heard the same rasping and thumping
against the wall, and, looking out, saw that a large
uprooted tree, which had lain near the road at the
upper end of the pasture, had floated down to the
house. Luckily its long roots dragged in the soil
and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current,
for had it struck the house in its full career, even
the strong nails and bolts in the piles could not
have withstood the shock. The hound had leaped
upon its knotty surface, and crouched near the
roots shivering and whining. A ray of hope
flashed across her mind. She drew a heavy
blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about the
babe, waded in the deepening waters to the door.
As the tree swung again, broadside on, making the
little cabin creak and tremble, she leaped on to its
trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtain-
ing a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining
HIGH- WATER MARK. 97
an arm about its roots, she held in the other her
moaning child. Then something cracked near the
front porch, and the whole front of the house she
had just quitted fell forward, just as cattle fall
on their knees before they lie down, and at the
same moment the great redwood-tree swung round
and drifted away with its living cargo into the
black night.
For all the excitement and danger, for all her
soothing of her crying babe, for all the whistling
of the wind, for all the uncertainty of her situa-
tion, she still turned to look at the deserted and
water-swept cabin. She remembered even then,
and she wonders how foolish she was to think of
it at that time, that she wished she had put on
another dress and the baby's best clothes ; and
she kept praying that the house would be spared
so that he, when he returned, would have some-
thing to come to, and it wouldn't be quite so
desolate, and how could he ever know what had
become of her and baby ? And at the thought
she grew sick and faint. But she had something
else to do besides worrying, for whenever the long
roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole
trunk made half a revolution, and twice dipped
her in the black water. The hound, who kept
distracting her by running up and down the tree
and howling, at last fell off at one of these collis-
ions. He swam for some time beside her, and she
5 o
98 HIGH- WATER MARK.
tried to get the poor beast upon the tree, but he
" acted silly " and wild, and at last she lost sight of
him forever. Then she and her baby were left
alone. The light which had burned for a few
minutes in the deserted cabin was quenched sud-
denly. She could not then tell whither she was
drifting. The outline of the- white dunes . on the
peninsula showed dimly ahead, and she judged
the tree was moving in a line with the river. It
must be about slack water, and she had probably
reached the eddy formed by the confluence of the
tide and the overflowing waters of the river. Un-
less the tide fell soon, there was present danger of
her drifting to its channel, and being carried out
to sea or crushed in the floating drift. That peril
averted, if she were carried out on the ebb toward
the bay, she might hope to strike one of the
wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest
till daylight. Sometimes she thought she heard
voices and shouts from the river, and the bellow-
ing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then again
it was only the ringing in her ears and throbbing
of her heart. She found at about this time that
she was so chilled and stiffened in her cramped
position that she could scarcely move, and the. baby
cried so when she put it to her breast that she
noticed the milk refused to flow ; and she was so
frightened at that, that she put her head under
her shawl, and for the first time cried bitterly.
HIGH- WATER MARK. 99
When she raised her head again, the boom of
the surf was behind her, and she knew that her
ark had again swung round. She dipped up the
water to cool her parched throat, and found that it
was salt as her tears. There was a relief, though,
for by this sign she knew that she was drifting
with the tide. It was then the wind went down, and
the great and awful silence oppressed her. There
was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed sides of
the great trunk on which she rested, and around
her all was black gloom and quiet. She spoke to
the baby just to hear herself speak, and to know that
she had not lost her voice. She thought then,
it was queer, but she could not help thinking it,
how awful must have been the night wiien the
great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the
sounds of creation were blotted out from the world.
She thought, too, of mariners clinging to spars, and
of poor women who were lashed to rafts, and beaten
to death by the cruel sea. She tried to thank God
that she was thus spared, and lifted her eyes from
the baby who had fallen into a fretful sleep. Sud-
denly, away to the southward, a great light lifted
itself out of the gloom, and flashed and flickered,
and flickered and flashed again. Her heart fluttered
quickly against the baby's cold cheek. It was the
lighthouse at the entrance of the bay. As she
was yet wondering, the tree suddenly rolled a lit-
tle, dragged a little, and then seemed to lie quiet
100 HIGH- WATER MARK.
and still. She put out her hand and the current
gurgled against it. The tree was aground, and, by
the position of the light and the noise of the surf,
aground upon the Dedlow Marsh.
Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and
croupy, had it not been for the sudden drying up
of that sensitive fountain, she would have felt safe
and relieved. Perhaps it was this which tended to
make all her impressions mournful and gloomy.
As the tide rapidly fell, a great flock of black brent
fluttered by her, screaming and crying. Then the
plover flew up and piped mournfully, as they
wheeled around the trunk, and at last fearlessly lit
upon it like a gray cloud. Then the heron flew
over and around her, shrieking and protesting, and*
at last dropped its gaunt legs only a few yards from
her. But, strangest of all, a pretty white bird,
larger than a dove, like a pelican, but not a peli-
can, circled around and around her. At last it
lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite over her shoul-
der. She put out her hand and stroked its beau-
tiful white neck, and it never appeared to move.
It stayed there so long that she thought she would
lift up the baby to see it, and try to attract her at-
tention. But when she did so, the child was so
chilled and cold, and had such a blue look under
the little lashes which it did n't raise at all, that
she screamed aloud, and the bird flew away, and
she fainted.
HIGH- WATER MARK. 101
Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it
was not so much, after all, to any but herself.
For when she recovered her senses it was bright
sunlight, and dead low water. There was a con-
fused noise of guttural voices about her, and an
old squaw, singing an Indian "hushaby," and
rocking herself from side to side before a fire
built on the marsh, before which she, the recov-
ered wife and mother, lay weak and weary. Her
first thought was for her baby, and she was about
to speak, when a young squaw, who must have
been a mother herself, fathomed her thought and
brought her the "mo witch," pale but living, in
such a queer little willow cradle all bound up, just
like the squaw's own young one, that she laughed
and cried together, and the young squaw and the
old squaw showed their big white teeth and
glinted their black eyes and said, "Plenty get
well, skeena mowitch," " wagee man come plenty
soon," and she could have kissed their brown faces
in her joy. And then she found that they had
been gathering berries on the marsh in their queer,
comical baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown
fluttering on the tree from afar, and the old squaw
could n't resist the temptation of procuring a new
garment, and came down and discovered the " wa-
gee " woman and child. And of course she gave
the garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine,
and when Tie came at last and rushed up to her,
102 HIGH-WATER MARK.
looking about ten years older in his anxiety, she
felt so faint again that they had to carry her to
the canoe. For, you see, he knew nothing about
the flood until he met the Indians at Utopia, and
knew by the signs that the poor woman was his
wife. And at the next high-tide he towed the
tree away back home, although it wasn't worth
the trouble, and built another house, using the
old tree for the foundation and props, and called
it after her, " Mary's Ark ! " Butr you may guess
the next house was built above High- water mark.
And that 's all.
Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent
capacity of the Dedlow Marsh. But you must
tramp over it at low water, or paddle over it at
high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in
the fog, as I have, to understand properly Mary's
adventure, or to appreciate duly the blessings of
living beyond High- Water Mark.
A LONELY BIDE.
AS I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw
that it was a dark night, a lonely road, and
that I was the only passenger. Let me assure the
reader that I -have no ulterior design in making
this assertion. A long course of light reading has
forewarned me what every experienced intelligence
must confidently look for from such a statement.
The story-teller who wilfully tempts Fate by such
obvious beginnings ; who is to the expectant reader
in danger of being robbed or half murdered, or
frightened by an escaped lunatic, or introduced to
his lady-love for the first time, deserves to be de-
tected. I am relieved to say that none of these
things occurred to me. The road from Wingdam
to Slumgullion knew no other banditti than the
regularly licensed hotel-keepers ; lunatics had not
yet reached such depth of imbecility as to ride
of their own free-will in California stages ; and my
Laura, amiable and long-suffering as she always is,
could not, I fear, have borne up against these de-
pressing circumstances long enough to have made
the slightest impression on me.
I stood with my shawl and carpet-bag in hand,
104 A LONELY RIDE.
gazing doubtingly on the vehicle. Even in the
darkness the red dust of Wingdam was visible
on its roof and sides, and the red slime of Slum-
gullion clung tenaciously to its wheels. I opened
the door ; the stage creaked uneasily, and in the
gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned me,
like ghostly hands, to come in now, and have my
sufferings out at- once.
I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a
circumstance which struck me as appalling and
mysterious. A lounger on the steps of the hotel,
whom I had reason to suppose was not in any way
connected with the stage company, gravely de-
scended, and, walking toward the conveyance, tried
the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated
in the carriage, and returned to the hotel -with a
serious demeanor. Hardly had he resumed his
position, when another individual, equally dis-
interested, impassively walked down the steps,
proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it, ex-
pectorated carefully on the axle, and returned
slowly and pensively to the hotel. A third spec-
tator wearily disengaged himself from one of the
Ionic columns of the portico and walked to the
box, remained for a moment in serious and expec-
torative contemplation of the boot, and then re-
turned to his column. There was something so
weird in this baptism that I grew quite nervous.
Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of in-
A LONELY BIDE. 105
finitesimal annoyances, winding up with the res-
olute persistency of the clerk at the stage-office
to enter my name misspelt on the way-bill, had
not predisposed me to cheerfulness. The inmates
of the Eureka House, from a social view-point,
were not attractive. There was the prevailing
opinion so common to many honest people
that a serious style of deportment and conduct
toward a stranger indicates high gentility and
elevated station. Obeying this principle, all hi-
larity ceased on my entrance to supper, and gen-
eral remark merged into the safer and uncompro-
mising chronicle of several bad cases of diphtheria,
then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left the
dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been
supping exclusively on mustard and tea-leaves, I
stopped a moment at the parlor door. A piano,
harmoniously related to the dinner-bell, tinkled re-
sponsive to a diffident and uncertain touch. On the
white wall the shadow of an old and sharp profile
was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy
curls. " I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, ' Praise to the
face is open disgrace.' " I heard no more. Dreading
some susceptibility to sincere expression on the
subject of female loveliness, I walked away, check-
ing the compliment that otherwise might have
risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought
shame and sorrow to the household.
It was with the memory of these experiences
5*
106 A LONELY HIDE.
resting heavily upon me, that I stood hesitatingly
before the stage door. The driver, about to mount,
was for a moment illuminated by the open door of
the hotel. He had the wearied look which was
the distinguishing expression of Wingdam. Satis-
fied that I was properly way-billed and receipted
for, he took no further notice of me. I looked
longingly at the box-seat, but he did not respond
to the appeal. I flung my carpet-bag into the
chasm, dived recklessly after it, and before I
was fairly seated with a great sigh, a creak-
ing of unwilling springs, complaining bolts, and
harshly expostulating axle, we moved away.
Kather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound
of the piano sank to rest, and the night and its
shadows moved solemnly upon us.
To say it was dark expressed but faintly the
pitchy obscurity that encompassed the vehicle.
The roadside trees were scarcely distinguishable as
deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by
the peculiar sodden odor that from time to time slug-
gishly flowed in at the open window as we rolled
by. We proceeded slowly ; so leisurely that, lean-
ing from the carriage, I more than once detected
the fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose
ruminating repose upon the highway we had ruth-
lessly disturbed. But in the darkness our progress,
more the guidance of some mysterious instinct
than any apparent volition of our own, gave an
A LONELY RIDE. 107
indefinable charm of security to our journey, that
a moment's hesitation or indecision on the part of
the driver would have destroyed.
I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehi-
cle I might obtain that rest so often denied me
in its crowded condition. It was a weak delusion.
When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find
that the ordinary conveniences for making several
people distinctly uncomfortable were distributed
throughout my individual frame. At last, resting
my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnas-
tic effort I became sufficiently composed to be
aware of a more refined species of torture. The
springs of the stage, rising and falling regularly,
produced a rhythmical beat, which began to pain-
fully absorb my attention. Slowly this thumping
merged into a senseless echo of the mysterious
female of the hotel parlor, and shaped itself into
this awful and benumbing axiom, " Praise-to-the-
face-is-open-disgrace. Praise-to-the-face-is-open-
disgrace." Inequalities of the road only quickened
its utterance or drawled it to an exasperating
length.
It was of no use to seriously consider the state-
ment. It was of no use to except to it indignantly.
It was of no use to recall the many instances
where praise to the face had redounded to the
everlasting honor of praiser and bepraised ; of no
use to dwell sentimentally on modest genius and
108 A LONELY RIDE.
courage lifted up and strengthened by open com-
mendation ; of no use to except to the mysterious
female, to picture her as rearing a thin-blooded
generation on selfish and mechanically repeated
axioms, all this failed to counteract the monoto-
nous repetition of this sentence. There was noth-
ing to do but to give in, and I was about to ac-
cept it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions
of darkness and necessity, for the time being,
when I became aware of some other annoyance
that had been forcing itself upon me for the last
few moments. How quiet the driver was !
Was there any driver ? Had I any reason to
suppose that he was not lying, gagged and bound
on the roadside, and the highwayman, with black-
ened face who did the thing so quietly, driving me
whither ? The thing is perfectly feasible. And
what is this fancy now being jolted out of me. A
story ? It 's of no use to keep it back, particu-
larly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes :
I am a Marquis, a French Marquis ; French, be-
cause the peerage is not so well known, and the
country is better adapted to romantic incident,
a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights
in the nobility. My name is something ligny. I
arn coming from Paris to my country-seat at St.
Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep and
tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me,
and dream of an angel. The carriage at last stops
A LONELY RIDE. 109
at the chateau. It is so dark that when I alight
I do not recognize the face of the footman who
holds the carriage door. But what of that ? peste I
I am heavy with sleep. The same obscurity also
hides the old familiar indecencies of the statues
on the terrace ; but there is a door, and it opens
and shuts behind me smartly. Then I find myself
in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has
quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the car-
riage thither. There is nothing for me to do, as a
gallant French Marquis, but to say, " Parlleu ! "
draw my rapier, and die valorously ! I am found a
week or two after, outside a deserted cabaret near
the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled linen
and my pockets stripped. No ; on second thoughts,
I am rescued, rescued by the angel I have been
dreaming of, who is the assumed daughter of the
brigand, but the real daughter of an intimate
friend.
Looking from the window again, in the vain
hope of distinguishing the driver, I found my eyes
were growing accustomed to the darkness. I could
see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky
woods, relieving a lighter sky. A few stars widely
spaced in this picture glimmered sadly. I noticed
again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their
serene faces ; and I hope that the Vandal who first
applied the flippant " twinkle " to them may not be
driven melancholy mad by their reproachful eyes.
110 A LONELY RIDE.
I noticed again the mystic charm of space that im-
parts a sense of individual solitude to each integer
of the densest constellation, involving the smallest
star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of
this calm and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in
my gloomy cavern. When I awoke the full moon
was rising. Seen from my window, it had an
indescribably unreal and theatrical effect. It was
the full moon of Norrna, that remarkable celestial
phenomenon which rises so palpably to a hushed
audience and a sublime andante chorus, until the
'Casta Diva is sung, the "inconstant moon" that
then and thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as
though it were a part of the solar system inaugu-
rated by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids
filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistle-
toe cut from that impossible oak, and again cold
chills ran down my back with the first strain of the
recitative. The thumping springs essayed to beat
time, and the private-box-like obscurity of the
vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view.
But it was a vast improvement upon my past ex-
perience, and I hugged the fond delusion.
My fears for the driver were dissipated with the
rising moon. A familiar sound had assured me of
his presence in the full possession of at least one
of his most important functions. Frequent and
full expectoration convinced me that his lips were
as yet not sealed by the gag of highwaymen, and
A LONELY RIDE. Ill
soothed my anxious ear. With this load lifted
from my mind, and assisted by the mild presence
of Diana, who left, as when she visited Endymion,
much of her splendor outside my cavern, I
looked around the empty vehicle. On the forward
seat lay a woman's hair-pin. I picked it up with
an interest that, however, soon abated. There was
no scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even
of hair-oil. No bend or twist in its rigid angles
betrayed any trait of its wearer's character. I
tried to think that it might have been " Mariar's."
I tried to imagine that, confining the symmet-
rical curls of that girl, it might have heard the
soft compliments whispered in her ears, which
provoked the wrath of the aged female. But in
vain. It was reticent and unswerving in its up-
right fidelity, and at last slipped listlessly through
my fingers.
I had dozed repeatedly, waked on the thresh-
old of oblivion by contact with some of the angles
of the coach, and feeling that I was uncon-
sciously assuming, in imitation of a humble in-
sect of my childish recollection, that spherical
shape which could best resist those impressions,
when I perceived that the moon, riding high in
the heavens, had begun to separate the formless
masses of the shadowy landscape. Trees isolated,
in clumps and assemblages, changed places before
my window. The sharp outlines of the distant
112 A LONELY RIDE.
hills came back, as in daylight, but little softened
in the dry, cold, dewless air of a California sum-
mer night. I was wondering how late it was, and
thinking that if the horses of the night travelled as
slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have
been spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden
spasm of activity attacked my driver. A succes-
sion of whip-snappings, like a pack of Chinese
crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage
leaped forward, and when I could pick myself
from under the seat, a long white building had in
some mysterious way rolled before my window.
It must be Slumgullion ! As I descended from the
stage I addressed the driver :
" I thought you changed horses on the road ? "
" So we did. Two hours ago."
" That 's odd. I did n't notice it."
" Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a
pleasant nap. Bully place for a nice quiet snooze,
' empty stage, sir ! "
THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT.
HIS name was Fagg, David Fagg. He came
to California in '52 with us, in the " Sky-
scraper." I don't think he did it in an adventu-
rous way. He probably had no other place to go
to. When a knot of us young fellows would recite
what splendid opportunities we resigned to go, and
how sorry our friends were to have us leave, and
show daguerreotypes and locks of hair, and talk of
Mary and Susan, the man of no account used to
sit by and listen with a pained, mortified expres-
sion on his plain face, and say nothing. I think he
had nothing to say. He had no associates except
when we patronized him ; and, in point of fact, he
was a good deal of sport to us. He was always
sea-sick whenever we had a capful of wind. He
never got his sea-legs on either. And I never
shall forget how we all laughed when Eattler took
him the piece of pork on a string, and But you
know that time-honored joke. And then we had
such a splendid lark with him. Miss Fanny
Twinkler could n't bear the sight of him, and we
used to make Fagg think that she had taken a
114 THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT.
fancy to him, and send him little delicacies and
books from the cabin. You ought to have wit-
nessed the rich scene that took place when he
came up, stammering and very sick, to thank her !
Did n't she flash up grandly and beautifully and
scornfully ? So like " Medora," Eattler said, Eat-
tler knew Byron by heart, and was n't old Fagg
awfully cut up ? Bat he got over it, and when
Eattler fell sick at Valparaiso, old Fagg used to
nurse him. You see he was a good sort of fellow,
but he lacked manliness and spirit.
He had absolutely no idea of poetry. I Ve seen
him sit stolidly by, mending his old clothes, when
Eattler delivered that stirring apostrophe of By-
ron's to the ocean. He asked Eattler once, quite
seriously, if he thought* Byron was ever sea-sick.
I don't remember Eattler' s reply, but I know we
all laughed very much, and I have no doubt it was
something good, for Eattler was smart.
When the "Skyscraper" arrived at San Fran-
cisco we had a grand " feed." We agreed to meet
every year and perpetuate the occasion. Of course
we did n't invite Fagg. Fagg was a steerage-pas-
senger, and it was necessary, you see, now we were
ashore, to exercise a little discretion. But Old Fagg,
as we called him, he w r as only about twenty-five
years old, by the way, was the source of im-
mense amusement to us that day. It appeared
that he had conceived the idea that he could walk
THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT. 115
to Sacramento, and actually started off afoot. We
had a good time, and shook hands with one another
all around, and so parted. Ah me ! only eight
years ago, and yet some of those hands then
clasped in amity have been clenched at each other,
or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets.
I know that we did n't dine together the next year,
because young Barker swore he would n't put his
feet under the same mahogany with such a very
contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Mb-
bles, who borrowed money at Valparaiso of young
Stubbs, who w^as then a waiter in a restaurant,
did n't like to meet such people.
When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote
Tunnel at Mugginsville, in '54, I thought I 'd
take a run up there and see it. I stopped at the
Empire Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and
rode round the town and out to the claim. One
of those individuals whom newspaper correspond-
ents call " our intelligent informant," and to whom
in all small communities the right of answering
questions is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed
out to me. Habit had enabled him to work and
talk at the same time, and he never pretermitted
either. He gave me a history of the claim, and
added : "You see, stranger " (he addressed the bank
before him), "gold is sure to come out 'er that theer
claim (he put in a comma with his pick), but the
old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the
116 THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT.
point of his pick) warn't of much account (a long
stroke of the pick for a period). He was green,
and let the boys about here jump him," and the
rest of his sentence was confided to his hat, which
he had removed to wipe his manly brow with his
red bandanna.
I asked him who was the original proprietor.
" His name war Fagg."
I went to see him. He looked a little older and
plainer. He had worked hard, he said, and was
getting on " so, so." I took quite a liking to him
and patronized him to some extent. Whether I
did so because I was beginning to have a distrust
for such fellows as Battler and Mixer is not neces-
sary for me to state.
You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in,
and how awfully we shareholders were done !
Well, the next thing I heard was that Eattler, who
was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at
Mugginsville keeping bar for the proprietor of the
Mugginsville Hotel, and that old Fagg had struck
it rich, and did n't know what to do with his
money. All this was told me by Mixer, who had-
been there, settling up matters, and likewise that
Fagg was sweet upon the daughter of the proprie-
tor of the aforesaid hotel. And so by hearsay and
letter I eventually gathered that old Eobins, the
hotel man, was trying to get up a match between
Nellie Eobins and Fagg. Nellie was a pretty,
THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT. 117
plump, and foolish little tiling, and would do just
as her father wished. I thought it would be a
good thing for Fagg if he should marry and settle
down ; that as a married man he might be of some
account. So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to
look after things.
It did me an immense deal of good to make
Eattler mix my drinks for me, Battler ! the gay,
brilliant, and unconquerable Eattler, who had tried
to snub me two years ago. I talked to him about
old Fagg and Nellie, particularly as I thought the
subject was distasteful. He never liked Fagg, and
he was sure, he said, that Nellie did n't. Did Nel-
lie like anybody else ? He turned around to the
mirror behind the bar and brushed up his hair ! I
understood the conceited wretch. I thought I 'd
put Fagg on his guard and get him to hurry up
matters. I had a long talk with him. You could
see by the way the poor fellow acted that he was
badly stuck. He sighed, and promised to pluck
up courage to hurry matters to a crisis. Nellie
was a good girl, and I think had a sort of quiet
respect for old Fagg's unobtrusiveness. But her
fancy was already taken captive by Rattler's su-
perficial qualities, which were obvious and pleas-
ing. I don't think Nellie was any worse than you
or I. We are more apt to take acquaintances at
their apparent value than their intrinsic worth.
It's less trouble, and, except when we want to
118 THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT.
trust them, quite as convenient. The difficulty
with women is that their feelings are apt to get
interested sooner than ours, and then, you know,
reasoning is out of the question. This is what old
Fagg would have known had he been of any ac-
count. But he was n't. So much the worse for
him.
It was a few months afterward, and I was sit-
ting in my office when in walked old Fagg. I
was surprised to see . him down, but we talked
over the current topics in that mechanical manner
of people who know that they have something
else to say, but are obliged to get at it in that for-
mal way. After an interval Fagg in his natural
manner said,
" I 'm going home ! "
" Going home ? "
"Yes, that is, I think I '11 take a trip to the
Atlantic States. I came to see you, as you know
I have some little property, and I have executed
a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs.
I have some papers I 'd like to leave with you.
Will you take charge of them ? "
" Yes," I said. " But what of Nellie ? "
His face fell. He tried to smile, and the com-
bination resulted in one of the most startling and
grotesque effects I ever beheld. At length he
said,
" I shall not marry Nellie, that is," he
THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT. 119
seemed to apologize internally for the positive form
of expression, "I think that I had better not."
" David Fagg," I said with sudden severity,
" you 're of no account ! "
To my astonishment his face brightened. " Yes,"
said he, " that 's it ! I 'm-of no account ! But I
always knew it. You see I thought Rattler loved
that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked
him better than she did me, and would be happier
I dare say with him. But then I knew that old
Robins would have preferred me to him, as I was
better off, and the girl would do as he said,
and, you see, I thought I was kinder in the way,
and so I left. But," he continued, as I was
about to interrupt him, "for fear the old man
might object to Rattler, I 've lent him enough to
set him up in business for himself in Dogtown.
A pushing, active, brilliant fellow, you know, like
Rattler can get along, and will soon be in his old
position again, and you need n't be hard on him,
you know, if he does n't. Good by."
I was too much disgusted with his treatment of
that Rattler to be at all amiable* but as his busi-
ness was profitable, I promised to attend to it, and
he left. A few weeks passed. The return steamer
arrived, and a terrible incident occupied the papers
for days afterward. People in all parts of the
State conned eagerly the details of an awful ship-
wreck, and those who had friends aboard went
120 THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT.
away by themselves, and read the long list of the
lost under their breath. I read of the gifted, the
gallant, the noble, and loved ones who had perished,
and among them I think I was the first to read
the name of David Fagg. For the "man of no
account " had " gone home ! "
STORIES
MLISS.
CHAPTER I.
JUST where the Sierra Nevada begins to sub-
side in gentler undulations, and the rivers
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 unexpectedly 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 circumstance. Dismounting from
the vehicle at the stage-office, the too confident
traveller is apt to walk straight out of town under
the impression that it lies in quite another direc-
tion. It is related that one of the tunnel-men,
two miles from town, met one of these self-
124 MLISS.
reliant passengers with a carpet-bag, umbrella,
Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of " Civi-
lization and Kefinement," plodding along over the
road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to
find the settlement 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 displacements of the red
soil, resembling more the chaos of some primary
elemental upheaval than the work of man ; while,
half-way down, a long flume straddled its narrow
body and disproportionate legs over the chasm,
like an enormous fossil of some forgotten ante-
diluvian. 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, arid here and
there were the ruins of some cabin with the
chimney 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 site
by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars
were taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith.
Three thousand dollars were expended 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 deple-
MLISS. 125
tion. Although Smith pierced the bowels of
the great red mountain, that five thousand dollars
was the first and last return of his labor. The
mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and
the flurne steadily ebbed away the remainder of
Smith's fortune. Then Smith went into quartz-
mining ; then into quartz-milling ; then into hy-
draulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees
into saloon-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 pro-
jected tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's
Pocket became a settlement with its two fancy
stores, its two hotels, its one express-office, and its
two first families. Occasionally its one long strag-
gling street was overawed by the assumption of
the latest San Francisco fashions, imported per
express, exclusively to the first families ; making
outraged Nature, in the ragged outline of her fur-
rowed surface, look still more homely, and putting-
personal insult on that greater portion of the. popu-
lation to whom the Sabbath, with a change of
linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness,
without the luxury of adornment. Then there
126 MLISS.
was a Methodist Church, and hard by a Monte
Bank, and a little beyond, on the mountain-side, a
graveyard ; and then a little school-house.
"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 full characters which are
supposed to combine the extremes of chirographi-
cal and moral excellence, and had got as far as
" Eiches are deceitful," and was elaborating the
noun with an insincerity of nourish 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 dis-
turb his work. But the opening of the door, and
the tapping continuing 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, uncombed, lustreless
black hair falling over her sun-burned 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 Eed Moun-
tain. Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl.
Her fierce, ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks
and lawless character, were in their way as prover-
MLISS. 127
bial 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,
stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain
road. The miners' camps along the stream sup-
plied her with subsistence during these voluntary
pilgrimages, in freely offered alms. Not but that
a larger protection had been previously extended
to Mliss. The Eev. Joshua McSnagley, "stated"
preacher, had placed her in the hotel as servant,
by way of preliminary refinement, and had in-
troduced 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 sensa-
tion that was so inimical to the orthodox dulness
and placidity of that institution, that, with a de-
cent regard for the starched frocks and unblem-
ished morals of the two pink-and-white-faced chil-
dren of the first families, the reverend gentleman
had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the
antecedents, and such the character of Mliss, 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.
128 MLISS.
" 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 ! "
If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncome-
liness 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 il-
logical instincts of his species, her boldness awak-
ened in him something of that respect which
all original natures pay unconsciously to one an-
other 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 ! 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 ! "
" 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 mas-
ter's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She
stopped ; she began to twist a lock of her hair be-
tween her fingers ; and the rigid line of upper lip,
drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and
MLISS. 129
quivered slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and
something like a blush struggled up to her cheek,
and tried to assert itself through the splashes of
redder soil, and the sunburn of years. Suddenly
she threw herself forward, 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 ?
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 " benolden " 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 school-house, and
seemed so inconsistent and discordant with the
sighing of the pines without, that he shortly
corrected himself with a sigh. The sigh was
quite as sincere in its way, however, and after a
6* I
130 MLISS.
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 ; 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 theories from child-
ish lips ; only bearing in mind perhaps better than
you or I the unnatural facts of her ragged dress,
her bleeding 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 be-
fore 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-
lined against the far-off 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
MLISS. 131
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 occasionally in her eyes, but her
manner was tamer and more subdued. Then be-
gan a series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in
w^hich master and pupil bore an equal part, and
which increased the confidence and sympathy be-
tween them. Although obedient under the mas-
ter's eye, at times during recess, if thwarted or
stung by a fancied slight, Mliss would rage in un-
governable fury, and 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 subject ; some
threatening to withdraw their children from such
evil companionship, and others as warmly uphold-
ing the course of the master in his work of rec-
lamation. Meanwhile, with a steady persistence
that seemed quite astonishing to him on looking
back afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually
out of the shadow of her past life, as though it
were but her natural progress down the narrow
132 MLISS.
path on which he had set her feet the moonlit
night of their first meeting. Eemembering the
experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he care-
fully avoided that Kock of Ages on which that
unskilful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.
But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced
to stumble 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 re-
spect and civilization ; and often a rough shake of
the hand, and words of homely commendation from
a red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the
cheek of the young master, and set him to think-
ing 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 ! "
MLISS. 133
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 re-
plied, " To see my father."
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 all, and the master knew she had kept res-
olutely aloof from him since her great change.
Satisfied from her manner that it was fruitless to
question her purpose, he passively followed. In
out-of-the-way places, low groggeries, restaurants,
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 anxiously 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 interfer-
ence of the master. Others, recognizing him mute-
ly, 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 toilsome half-hour's
walk, but in vain. They were returning by the
134 MLISS.
ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the>
lights of the town on the opposite bank, when,
suddenly, sharply, a quick report rang out on tha
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. Lights seemed
to dance and move quickly on the outskirts of the
town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite
audibly beside them, a few stones loosened them-
selves 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 river's bed, and, jumping from boulder to boul-
der, reached the base of Red Mountain and the
outskirts of the village. Midway 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 cross-
ing 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 sorrowful men. Out from among
them the child appeared, and, taking the master's
hand, led him silently before what seemed a ragged
MLISS. 135
hole in 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 decay-
ing timbers. The child pointed to what appeared
to be some ragged, cast-off clothes left in the hole
by the late occupant. The master approached
nearer with his naming 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.
CHAPTEE II.
THE opinion which McSnagley expressed in
reference to a " change of heart " supposed to
be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly de-
scribed 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 hand-
somely, and did the fair thing to the memory of
one of " our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully
136 MLISS.
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 Eev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point
of Mliss's conversion, and, indirectly attributing to
the unfortunate child the suicide of her father,
made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the
beneficial effects of the " silent tomb," and in this
cheerful contemplation drove most of the children
into speechless horror, and caused the pink-and-
white scions of the first families to howl dismally
and refuse to be comforted.
The long dry summer came. As each fierce day
burned itself out in little whiffs 'of pearl-gray
smoke on the mountain summits, and the up-
springing 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 churchyard of a Sabbath afternoon, was
sometimes surprised to find a few wild-flowers
plucked from the damp pine-forests scattered
there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the
little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were
formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the chil-
dren loved to keep in their desks, intertwined
with the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa,
MLISS. 137
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 sensa-
tion to the master deeper than his esthetic sense.
One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded
ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of the for-
est, perched upon a prostrate pine, on a fantastic
throne formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless
branches, her lap full of grasses and pine-burrs,
and crooning to herself one of the negro melodies
of her younger life. ' Recognizing him at a dis-
tance, she made room for him on her elevated
throne, and with a grave assumption of hospitality
and patronage that would have been ridiculous
had it not been so terribly earnest, she fed him
with pine-nuts and crab-apples. The master took
that opportunity to point out to her the noxious
and deadly qualities of the 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
satisfied, 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 preferred
that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kind-hearted
138 MLISS.
specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, 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-
sacrifices and struggles, had'at last subjugated her
naturally careless disposition to principles of " or-
der," 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 without
shoes, leaving those important articles on the
threshold, for the delight of a barefooted walk
down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were
" keerless " of their clothes. So with but one ex-
ception, however much the " Prairie Eose " 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 con-
ception, neat, orderly, and dull.
It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher
to imagine that "Clytie" was a consolation and
model for Mliss. Following thfs fallacy, Mrs. Mor-
pher threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she
MLISS. 139
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 peculiarities, and
in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
Mountain 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 lan-
guished in 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 uniformly bad and wanted fix-
ing ; that she usually accompanied the request
with a certain expectation in her eye that was
somewhat disproportionate to the quality of ser-
vice 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 blond
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
140 MLISS.
severely educated in the school in which Clytie
was taking her first lesson, and, on the ' whole,
withstood the flexible curves and factitious glance
like the fine young Spartan that he was. Perhaps
an insufficient quality of food may have tended to
this asceticism. He generally avoided Clytie ; but
one evening, when she returned to the school-
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
Clytemnestra's admirers.
The morning after this affecting episode Mliss
did not come to school. ISToon came, but not Mliss.
Questioning Clytie on the subject, it appeared that
they had left the school together, but the wilful
Mliss had taken another road. The afternoon
brought her not. In the evening he called on Mrs.
Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed.
Mr. Morpher had spent all day in search of her,
without discovering a trace that might lead to her
discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable
accomplice, but that equitable infant succeeded
in impressing 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, muddied and soiled
MLISS. 141
beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick
at heart, the master returned to the school-house.
As he lit his lamp and seated himself at his desk,
he found a note lying before him addressed to him-
self, in Mliss's handwriting. It seemed to be writ-
ten on a leaf torn from some old memorandum-
book, and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been
sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost
tenderly, the master read as follows :
RESPECTED SIR, When you read this, I am run
away. Never to come back. Never, NEVER, NEVER.
You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, 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 oppinion is of her, it is this, she is
perfekly disgustin. That is all and no more at pres-
ent from
Yours respectfully,
MELISSA SMITH.
The master sat pondering on this strange epistle
till the moon lifted its bright face above the dis-
tant hills, and illuminated the trail that led to the
school-house, 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.
At sunrise the next morning he was picking his
way through the palm-like fern and thick under-
142 MLISS.
"brush of the pine-forest, starting the hare from its
form, and awakening a querulous protest from a
few dissipated crows, who had evidently been mak-
ing 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 crackling limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of
the fallen monarch, and sheltered itself in some
friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat,
found the nest still warm ; looking up in the inter-
twining 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 contempt in addi-
tional syllables to that classical young woman's
already long-drawn title.) " you wicked thing ! "
"I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing
since dinner yesterday. I am famished ! " and the
young man in a state of remarkable exhaustion
leaned against the tree.
Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days
of her gypsy life she had known the sensation he
MUSS. 143
so artfully simulated. Overcome by his heart-
broken tone, but not entirely 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 unable to find
them ; the effects 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'll
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 mo-
ments nothing transpired but the munching of the
pine-nuts. " Do you feel better ? " she asked, with
some solicitude. The master confessed to a recu-
perated feeling, 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 ? "
144 MLISS.
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 teach
him to be better ? "
The child hung her head for a few moments in
silence. The master waited patiently. Tempted
by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and
raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and
gazed at them. A squirrel ran half-way down
the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and there
stopped.
" We are waiting, Lissy," said the master, in a
whisper, and the child smiled. Stirred by a pass-
ing 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 fore-
head, kissed her ; and so, hand in hand, they passed
out of the damp aisles and forest odors into the
open sunlit road.
MLISS. 145
CHAPTEE 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. Perhaps it was only that
the round curves and plump outline offered more
extended pinching surface. But while such ebul-
litions were under the master's control, her en-
mity occasionally took a new and irrepressible
form.
The master in his first estimate of the child's
character could not conceive that she had ever
possessed a doll. But the master, like many other
professed readers of character, was safer in a pos-
teriori than a priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll,
but then it was emphatically Mliss's doll, a small-
er 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 gown of faded stuff was
dirty and ragged as hers had been. Mliss had
146 MLISS.
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 hollow tree near the school-house, and
only allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles. Ful-
filling a stern duty to her doll, as she would to
herself, it knew no luxuries.
Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable
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 in its round red cheeks and
mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became evi-
dent before long that Mliss had also noticed the
same resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its
waxen head on the ro'cks when she was alone, and
sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck
to and from school. At other times, setting it up
on her desk, she made a pin-cushion of its patient
and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in
revenge of what she considered a second figura-
tive obtrusion of Clytie's excellences upon her, or
whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the
rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging 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 master
could not help noticing in her different tasks the
MLISS. 147
working of a quick, restless, and vigorous percep-
tion. 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 infallible. But her courage and dar-
ing in passing beyond her own depth and that
of the floundering little swimmers around her, in
their minds outweighed all errors of judgment.
Children are not better than grown people in this
respect, I fancy ; and whenever the little red hand
flashed above her desk, there was a wondering
silence, and even the master was sometimes op-
pressed 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, irreverent, 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,
148 MLISS.
when he determined to call on the Eev. Mc-
Snagley for advice. This decision was somewhat
humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were
not friends. But he thought of Mliss, 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 school-
house, and perhaps with a complacent conscious-
ness 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 master was looking
" peartish," and hoped he had got .over the " neu-
ralgy " and " rheumatiz." 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
his certain method of curing the dumb "ager"
upon the book and volume of his brain, Mr. Mc-
Snagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morplier.
" She is an adornment to Christianity, and has a
likely growin' young family," added Mr. McSnag-
ley ; " and there 's that 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 this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was
MLISS. 149
something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of
speaking of Mrs. Morpher's earliest born. So that
the master, after a few futile efforts to say some-
thing natural, found it convenient to recall an-
other engagement, and left without asking the
information required, but in his after reflections
somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnag-
ley 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 bothered ?" "No." "Nor
hungry?" (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that
might attack a person at any moment.) "No."
"Nor thinking of her?" "Of 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 for " Hope you 11 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 condescended to
appear more like other children, and be, as she
expressed it, " good."
150 MLISS.
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 be-
coming the capital of the State not entirely defi-
nite, he contemplated a change. He had informed
the school trustees privately of his intentions, but,
educated young men of unblemished moral charac-
ter being scarce at that time, he consented to con-
tinue his school 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. Mor-
pher, Clytie, or any of his scholars. His reticence
was partly the result of a constitutional indisposi-
tion to fuss, partly a desire to be spared the ques-
tions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly
that he never really believed he was going to do
anything before it was done.
He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a
selfish instinct, perhaps, which made him try to
fancy his feeling for the child was foolish, roman-
tic, 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 Red
Mountain, would be a w T oman. He had done his
duty. After Smith's death he addressed letters to
Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a
MLISS. 151
sister of Melissa's mother. Thanking the master,
she stated her intention of leaving the Atlantic
States for California 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
represent Clytemnestra, labelled " the white girl,"
to prevent mistakes, and impaled them upon the
outer walls of the school-house.
When the summer was about spent, and the
last harvest had been gathered in the valleys, the
master bethought him of gathering in a few ri-
pened shoots of the young idea, and of having his
Harvest-Home, or Examination. 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-possessed were
the lucky recipients of the honors. The reader
will 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
152 MLISS.
self-esteem and saint-like correctness of deport-
ment. The other little ones were timid and blun-
dering. Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course,
captivated the greatest number and provoked the
greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents had uncon-
sciously awakened the strongest sympathies of a
class whose athletic forms were ranged against the
Avails, or whose handsome bearded faces looked in
at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was over-
thrown by an unexpected circumstance.
McSnagley had invited himself, and had been
going through the pleasing entertainment of fright-
ening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and most
ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive fu-
nereal 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 tethered orbits of
the planets, when McSnagley impressively arose.
" Meelissy ! ye were speaking of the revolutions
of this yere yearth and the move-merits of the sun,
and I think ye said it had been a doing of it since
the creashun, eh ? " Mliss nodded a scornful affirm-
ative. " Well, war that the truth ? " said McSnag-
ley, folding his arms. " Yes," said Mliss, shutting
up her little red lips tightly. The handsome out-
lines at the windows peered further in the school-
room, and a saintly Eaphael-face, with blond beard
and soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp
MLISS. 153
in the diggings, turned toward the child and whis-
pered, " Stick to it, Mliss ! " The reverend gentle-
man heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate
glance at the master, then at the children, and
then rested his look on Clytie. That young woman
softly elevated her round, white arm. Its seduc-
tive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and mas-
sive specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her hum-
blest worshippers, worn in honor of the occasion.
There w T as a momentary silence. 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 ! " There was a low hum of ap-
plause in the school-room, a triumphant expression
on McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the mas-
ter's, and a comical look of disappointment re-
flected from the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly
over her Astronomy, and then shut the book with
a loud snap. A groan burst from McSnagley, an
expression of astonishment from the school-room,
a yell from the windows, as Mliss brought her red
fist down on the desk, with the emphatic decla-
ration,
" It 's a d n lie. I don't believe it ! "
7 *
154 MLisa
CHAPTEK 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 bud-
ding, the Ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery
for spring. On the green upland which climbed
Eed Mountain at its southern aspect the long
spike of the monk's-hood shot up from it's 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 buttercups. 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 superstition
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 "side-splitting" and
" screaming farces " ; that, alternating pleasantly
with this, there would be some melodrama and a
grand divertisement, which would include singing,
MLISS. 155
dancing, etc. These announcements occasioned a
great fluttering among the little folk, and were
the theme of much excitement and great specu-
lation among the master's scholars. 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 the master, turning wearily to the child, was
astonished, and felt something 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 seldom laughed. Nor was she dis-
creetly affected to the delicate extremes of the
corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-
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
curtain 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.
156 MLISS.
Then she said, " Now take me home ! " 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 master
thought proper to ridicule the whole performance.
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 !
" Why ? " said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the
drooping lid. " Oh ! well, he could n't support his
wife at his present salary, and pay so much a week
for his fine clothes, and then they would n't re-
ceive 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 some-
body else ; but I think the husband of the pretty
young countess takes the tickets at the door, or
pulls up the curtain, or snuffs the candles, or does
something equally refined and elegant. 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 occasionally, I don't think
people ought to take advantage of it and give him
MLISS. 157
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 her 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 invi-
tation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and
shading 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 afternoon ramble was
for once omitted, owing to the absence of his
trustworthy guide. As he was putting away his
books and preparing to leave the school-house, a
small voice piped at his side, " Please, sir ? " The
master turned and there stood Aristides Morpher.
"Well, my little man," said the master, impa-
tiently, " what is it ? quick ! "
" Please, sir, me and ' Kerg ' thinks that Mliss
is going to run away agin."
158 MLISS.
" What 's that, sir ? " said the master, with that
unjust testiness with which we always receive dis-
agreeable 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 Mont-
moressy, and she spouted right off by heart," and
the little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.
" 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, endeavoring 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 mas-
ter, as if continuing the conversation.
" At the Arcade," said Aristides.
When they reached the main street the master
paused. " Eun 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,
MLISS. 159
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, before he entered the bar-room. It contained
the usual number of loungers, who stared at him as
he entered. One of them looked at him so fixedly
and with such a strange expression that the master
stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only
his own reflection 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 Eed Mountain
Banner from one of the tables, and tried to recover
his composure by reading the column of advertise-
ments.
He then walked through the bar-room, through
the restaurant, and into the billiard-room. The
child was not there. In the latter apartment a
person was standing by one of the tables with a
broad-brimmed glazed hat on his head. The mas-
ter recognized him as the agent of the dramatic
company ; he had taken a dislike to him at their
first meeting, 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 a
glazed hat. He had noticed the master, but tried
that common trick of unconsciousness, in which
vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a billiard-
160 MLISS.
cue in his hand, he pretended to play with a ball
in the 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 quarrel, 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 profes-
sion. 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, squeezing 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 responsible for her ca-
reer. You know as well as I do the kind of life
you offer her. As you may learn of any one here,
I have already brought her out of an existence
worse than death, out of the streets and the con-
tamination of vice. I am trying to do so again.
MLISS. 161
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," con-
tinued the master, " but she is better 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 gen-
tleman, leave her to me. I am willing " But
here something rose again in the master's throat,
and the sentence remained unfinished.
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 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 energy 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
162 MLISS.
up the corners of the fellow'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 mas-
ter 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 blaeding
from the blow, but his fingers were clenched
around the handle of a glittering knife. He could
not remember when or how he got it.
O
The man who was holding his hand was Mr.
Morpher. He hurried the master to the door, but
the master held back, 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 to-
gether. As they walked along Mr. Morpher 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 prom-
ised 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
MLISS. 163
in nearing it to find the door open, still more
surprised to find Mliss sitting there.
The master's nature, as I have hinted before,
had, like most sensitive organizations, a selfish
basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late
adversary still rankled in his heart. It was pos-
sible, he thought, that such a construction might '
be put upon his affection for the child, which
at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had
she not voluntarily abnegated his authority and
affection ? And what had everybody else said
about her ? Why should he alone combat the
opinion of all, and be at last obliged tacitly to
confess the truth of all they had predicted ? And
he had been a participant in 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 ex-
pression.
" Did you kill him ? " she asked.
164 MLISS.
" No I " said the master.
" That 's what I gave you the knife for ! " said
the child, quickly.
" Gave me the knife ? " repeated the master, 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 ? " 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 astonishment.
"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 ? Because you
wouldn't tell me you was going away. I knew
it. I heard you tell the Doctor 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 perfectly
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 '11 eat this
and die here. I don't care which. I won't stay
here, where they hate and despise me ! Neither
MLTSS. 165
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 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 shouldn't
I ? You said a mouthful of that root would kill
me, and I always carry it here," and she struck
her breast with her clenched fist.
The master thought of the vacant plot beside
Smith's grave, and of the passionate little figure
before him. Seizing her hands in his and looking
full into her truthful eyes, he said,
" Lissy, will you go with me 1 "
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 Eed Mountain closed upon them for-
ever.
THE EIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
THE year of grace 1797 passed away on the
coast of California in a southwesterly gale.
The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by
the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough
and turbulent ; its foam clung quivering to the
seaward wall of the Mission garden ; the air
was filled with flying sand and spume, and as
the Senor Comandante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra,
looked from the deep embrasured window of the
Presidio guard-room, he felt the salt breath of the
distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-dried
cheeks.
The Commander, I have said, was gazing thought-
fully from the window of the guard-room. He
may have been reviewing the events of the year
now about to pass away. But, like the garri-
son at the Presidio, there was little to review ;
the year, like its predecessors, had been unevent-
ful, the days had slipped by in a delicious mo-
notony of simple duties, unbroken by incident
or interruption. The regularly recurring feasts
and saints' days, the half-yearly courier from San
Diego, the rare transport-ship and rarer foreign
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER. 167
vessel, were the mere details of his patriarchal
life. If there was no achievement, there was cer-
tainly no failure. Abundant harvests and patient
industry amply supplied the wants of Presidio and
Mission. Isolated from the family of nations, the
wars which shook the world concerned them not
so. much as the last earthquake ; the struggle that
emancipated their sister colonies on the other side
of the continent to them had no suggestiveness.
In short, it was that glorious Indian summer of
California history, around which so much poetical
haze still lingers, that bland, indolent autumn
of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the
wintry storms of Mexican independence and the
reviving spring of American conquest.
The Commander turned from the window and
walked toward the fire that burned brightly on
the deep oven-like hearth. A pile of copy-books,
the work of the Presidio school, lay on the table.
As he turned over the leaves with a paternal
interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture
text, the first pious pot-hooks of the pupils of
San Carlos, an audible commentary fell from
his lips : " ' Abimelech took her from Abraham '
ah, little one, excellent ! ' Jacob sent to see his
brother ' - - body of Christ ! that up-stroke of
thine, Paquita, is marvellous ; the Governor shall
see it ! " A film of honest pride dimmed the Com-
mander's left eye, the right, alas ! twenty years
168 THE EIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER.
before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He
rubbed it softly with the sleeve of his leather
jacket, and continued : " ' The Ishmaelites- having
arrived ' '
He stopped, for there was a step in the court-
yard, a foot upon the threshold, and a stranger
entered. With the instinct of an old soldier,
the Commander, after one glance at the intruder,
turned quickly toward the wall, where his trusty
Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But
it was not there, and as he recalled that the last
time he had seen that weapon it was being ridden
up and down the gallery by Pepito, the infant son
of Bautista, the tortilio-maker, he blushed and
then contented himself with frowning upon the
intruder.
But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was
decidedly peaceful. He was unarmed, and wore
the ordinary cape of tarpauling and sea-boots of a
mariner. Except a villanous smell of codfish,
there was little about him that was peculiar.
His name, as he informed the Commander, in
Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or pre-
cise, his name was Peleg Scudder. He was mas-
ter of the schooner " General Court," of the port
of Salem, in Massachusetts, on a trading-voyage
to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of
weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged
permission to ride out the gale under the head-
THE EIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER. 169
lands of the blessed Trinity, and no more. Water
he did not need, having taken in a supply at
Bodega, He knew the strict surveillance of the
Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign ves-
sels, and would do nothing against the severe dis-
cipline and good order of the settlement. There
was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone as he
glanced toward the desolate parade-ground of the
Presidio and the open unguarded gate. The fact
was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had discreetly
retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm,
and was then sound asleep in the corridor.
The Commander hesitated. The port regulations
were severe, but he was accustomed to exercise
individual authority, and beyond an old order
issued ten years before, regarding the American
ship " Columbia," there was no precedent to guide
him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of
humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request.
It is but just to the Commander to say, that his
inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh with
his decision. He would have denied with equal
disregard of consequences that right to a seventy-
four gun ship which he now yielded so gracefully
to this Yankee trading-schooner. He stipulated
only, that there should be no communication
between the ship and shore. "Tor yourself,
Sefior Captain," he continued, " accept my hospi-
tality. The fort is yours as long as you shall
8
170 THE EIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER.
grace it with your distinguished presence " ; and
with old-fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance
of withdrawing from the guard-room.
Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of
the half-dismantled fort, the two mouldy brass
cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the
shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting
the Commander's offer literally, conceived in the
reckless spirit of a man who never let slip an
offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a
timely reflection of the commercial unimportance
of the transaction checked him. He only took
a capacious quid of tobacco, as the Commander
gravely drew a settle before the fire, and in honor
of his guest untied the black silk handkerchief that
bound his grizzled brows.
What passed between Salvatierra and his guest
that night it becomes me not, as a grave chronicler
of the salient points of history, to relate. I have
said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker,
and under the influence of divers strong waters,
furnished by his host, he became still more loqua-
cious. And think of a man with a twenty years'
budget of gossip ! The Commander learned, for
the first time, how Great Britain lost her colonies ;
of the French Eevolution ; of the great Napoleon,
whose achievements, perhaps, Peleg colored more
highly than the Commander's superiors would have
liked. And when Peleg turned questioner, the
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER. 171
Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made
himself master of the gossip of the Mission and
Presidio, the " small-beer " chronicles of that pas-
toral age, the conversion of the heathen, the Pre-
sidio schools, and even asked the Commander how
he had lost his eye ! It is said that at this point
of the conversation Master Peleg produced from
about his person divers small trinkets, kick-shaws
and new-fangled trifles, and even forced some of
them upon his host. It is further alleged that
under the malign influence of Peleg and several
glasses of aguardiente, the Commander lost some-
what of his decorum, and behaved in a manner
unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-
flown Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin,
high voice, divers madrigals and heathen canzonets
of an amorous complexion ; chiefly in regard to a
" little one " who was his, the Commander's, " soul " !
These allegations, perhaps unworthy the notice of
a serious chronicler, should be received with great
caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay.
That the Commander, however, took a handkerchief
and attempted to show his guest the mysteries of
the semli cuacua, capering in an agile but in-
decorous manner about the apartment, has been
denied. Enough for the purposes of this narra-
tive, that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to
bed with many protestations of undying friend-
ship, and then, as the gale had abated, took his
172 THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER.
leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the
"General Court." When the day broke the ship
was gone.
I know not if Peleg kept his word with his
host. It is said that the holy fathers at the Mis-
sion that night heard a loud chanting in the plaza,
as of the heathens singing psalms through their
noses ; that for many days after an odor of salt
codfish prevailed in the settlement; that a dozen
hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed,
were found in the possession of the wife of the
baker, and that several bushels of shoe-pegs, which
bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but were quite
inadequate to the purposes of provender, were
discovered in the stable of the blacksmith. But
when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a
Yankee trader's word, the stringent discipline of
the Spanish port regulations, and the proverbial
indisposition of my countrymen to impose upon
the confidence of a simple people, he will at once
reject this part of the story.
A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798,
awoke the Commander. The sun was shining
brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up in
bed, and through the force of habit rubbed his left
eye. As the remembrance of the previous night
came back to him, he jumped from his couch and
ran to the window. There was no ship in the
THE EIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER. 173
bay. A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and
he rubbed both of his eyes. Not content with
this, he consulted the metallic mirror which hung
beside his crucifix. There was no mistake ; the
Commander had a visible second eye, a right
one, as good, save for the purposes of vision, as
the left.
"Whatever might have been the true secret of this
transformation, but one opinion prevailed at San
Carlos. It was one of those rare miracles vouch-
safed a pious Catholic community as an evidence
to the heathen, through the intercession of the
blessed San Carlos himself. That their beloved
Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith,
should be the recipient of this miraculous mani-
festation was most fit and seemly. The Com-
mander himself was reticent ; he could not tell a
falsehood, he dared not tell the truth. After all,
if the good folk of San Carlos believed that the
powers of his right eye were actually restored,
was it wise and discreet for him to undeceive
them ? For the first time in his life the Com-
mander thought of policy, for the first time he
quoted that text which has been the lure of so
many well-meaning but easy Christians, of being
"all things to all men." Infeliz Hermenegildo
Salvatierra !
For by degrees an ominous whisper crept through
the little settlement. The Eight Eye of the Com-
174 THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER.
mander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise a
baleful effect upon the beholder. No one could
look at it without winking. It was cold, hard,
relentless and unflinching. More than that, it
seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience,
a faculty of seeing through and into the inarticu-
late thoughts of those it looked upon. The sol-
diers of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than
the voice of their commander, and answered his
glance rather than his lips in questioning. The
servants could not evade the ever-watchful, but
cold attention that seemed to pursue them. The
children of the Presidio School smirched their
copy-books under the awful supervision, and poor
Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that
marvellous up-stroke when her patron stood beside
her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation,
and timidity took the place of trust, confidence,
and security throughout San Carlos. Whenever the
Eight Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell
with it.
Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the bale-
ful influence of his miraculous acquisition. Un-
conscious of its effect upon others, he only saw in
their actions evidence of certain things that the
crafty Peleg had hinted on that eventful New
Year's eve. His most trusty retainers stammered,
blushed, and faltered before him. Self-accusations,
confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER. 175
extravagant excuses and apologies met his mildest
inquiries. The very children that he loved his
pet pupil, Paquita seemed to be conscious of
some hidden sin. The result of this constant ir-
ritation showed itself more plainly. For the first
half-year the Commander's voice and eye were at
variance. He was still kind, tender, and thought-
ful in speech. Gradually, however, his voice took
upon itself the hardness of his glance and its
sceptical, impassive quality, and as the year again
neared its close it was plain that the Commander
had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to
the Commander.
It may be surmised that these changes did not
escape the watchful solicitude of the Fathers. In-
deed, the few who were first to ascribe the right
eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the
special grace of the blessed San Carlos, now talked
openly of witchcraft and the agency of Luzbel,
the evil one. It would have fared ill with Her-
menegildo Salvatierra had he been aught but Com-
mander or amenable to local authority. But the
reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no
power over the political executive, and all attempts
at spiritual advice failed signally. He retired baf-
fled and confused from his first interview with the
Commander, who seemed now to take a grim sat-
isfaction in the fateful power of his glance. The
holy father contradicted himself, exposed the fal-
176 THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER.
lacies of his own arguments, and even, it is as-
serted, committed himself to several undoubted
heresies. When the Commander stood up at mass,
if the officiating priest caught that sceptical and
searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined.
Even the power of the Holy Church seemed to be
lost, and the last hold upon the affections of the
people and the good order of the settlement de-
parted from San Carlos.
As the long dry summer passed, the low hills
that surrounded the white walls of the Presidio
grew more and more to resemble in hue the leath-
ern jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself
seemed to have borrowed his dry, hard glare. The
earth was cracked and seamed with drought ; a
blight had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards,
and the rain, long delayed and ardently prayed for,
came not. The sky was as tearless as the right
eye of the Commander. Murmurs of discontent,
insubordination, and plotting among the Indians
reached his ears ; he only set his teeth the more
firmly, tightened the knot of his black silk hand-
kerchief, and looked up his Toledo.
The last day of the year 1798 found the Com-
mander sitting, at the hour of evening prayers,
alone in the guard-room. He no longer attended
the services of the Holy Church, but crept away
at such times to some solitary spot, where he spent
the interval in silent meditation. The firelight
THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER. 177
played upon the low beams and rafters, but left
the bowed figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sit-
ting thus, he felt a small hand touch his arm, and,
looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little
Indian pupil, at his knee. "Ah, littlest of all,"
said the Commander, with something of his old
tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminu-
tives of his native speech, "sweet one, what
doest thou here ? Art thou not afraid of him
whom every one shuns and fears ? "
" No," said the little Indian, readily, " not in the
dark. I hear your voice, the old voice ; I feel
your touch, the old touch ; but I see not your
eye, Senor Comandante. That only I fear, and
that, Senor, my father," said the child, lift-
ing her little arms towards his, " that I know
is not thine own ! "
The Commander shuddered and turned away.
Then, recovering himself, he kissed Paquita grave-
ly on the forehead and bade her retire. A few
hours later, when silence had fallen upon the Pre-
sidio, he sought his own couch and slept peace-
fully.
At about the middle watch of the night a
dusky figure crept through the low embrasure of
the Commander's apartment. Other figures were
flitting through the parade-ground, which the Com-
mander might have seen had he not slept so quiet-
ly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch
8* L
178 THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER.
and listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration.
Something glittered in the firelight as the savage
lifted his arm another moment and the sore per-
plexities of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have
been over, when suddenly the savage started and
fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The Com-
mander slept peacefully, but his right eye, widely
opened, fixed and unaltered, glared coldly on the
would-be assassin. The man fell to the earth in a
fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.
To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal
blows thick and fast upon the mutinous savages
who now thronged the room, was the work of a mo-
ment. Help opportunely arrived, and the undis-
ciplined Indians were speedily driven beyond the
walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received
a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand
to that mysterious organ, it was gone. Never
again was it found, and never again, for bale or
bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of the Com-
mander.
With it passed away the spell that had fallen
upon San Carlos. The rain returned to invigorate
the languid soil, harmony was restored between
priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved
over the sere hillsides, the children flocked again
to the side of their martial preceptor, a Te Deum
was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral con-
tent once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of
THE EIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER. 179
San Carlos. And far southward crept the " General
Court " with its master, Peleg Scudder, trafficking in
beads and peltries with the Indians, and offering
glass eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions
to the chiefs.
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
PART L IN THE FIELD.
IT was near the close of an October day that I
began to be disagreeably conscious of the Sac-
ramento Valley. I had been riding since sunrise,
and my course through the depressing monotony
of the long level landscape affected me more like
a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,
performed under that sincerest of natural phenom-
ena, a California sky. The recurring stretches of
brown and baked fields, the gaping fissures in the
dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills,
and the herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like
features of some glittering stereoscopic picture that
never changed. Active exercise might have re-
moved this feeling, but my horse by some subtle
instinct had long since given up all ambitious
effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.
It was autumn, but not the season suggested to
the Atlantic reader under that title. The sharply
defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons were
prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills.
In the dry atmosphere the decay of vegetation was
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 181
too rapid for the slow hectic which overtakes an
Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical
for such thin disguises. She merely turned the
Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old di-
agnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted features.
In the contemplation of such a prospect there
was little to excite any but a morbid fancy. There
were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and the
setting of the sun was accompanied with as little
ostentation as was consistent with the dryly prac-
tical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed, with a
rising wind, which increased as the shadows deep-
ened on the plain. The fringe of alder by the
watercourse began to loom up as I urged my horse
forward. A half-hour's active spurring brought
me to a corral, and a little beyond a house, so low
and broad it seemed at first sight to be half buried
in the earth.
My secorid impression was that it had grown out
of the soil, like some monstrous vegetable, its
dreary proportions were so in keeping with the
vast prospect. There were no recesses along its
roughly boarded walls for vagrant and unprofit-
able shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No
projection for the wind by night to grow musical
over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to ; only a long
wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin,
and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were
red with the sinking sun, as though bloodshot and
182 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
inflamed from a too long unlidded existence. The
tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed
against the rattling wind.
To avoid being confounded with this familiar
element, I walked to the rear of the house, which
was connected with a smaller building by a slight
platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was
standing there, and met my salutation with a look
of inquiry, and, without speaking, led the way to
the principal room. As 1 entered, four young men,
who were reclining by the fire, slightly altered
their attitudes of perfect repose, but beyond that
betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound
started from a dark corner with a growl, but was
immediately kicked by the old man into obscurity,
and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I in-
stantly received the impression that for a long time
the group by the fire had not uttered a word or
moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly stated
my business.
Was a United States surveyor. Had come on
account of the Espiritu Santo Rancho. Wanted
to correct the exterior boundaries of township
lines, so as to connect with the near exteriors of
private grants. There had been some intervention
to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had pre-
empted adjacent " settled land warrants," in-
terrupted the old man. " Ah, yes ! Land Warrants,
and then this was Mr. Tryan ? "
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 183
I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccu-
pied in connecting other public lines with private
surveys, as I looked in his face. It was certainly
a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect
of that mining operation known as "ground slui-
cing " ; the harder lines of underlying character
were exposed, and what were once plastic curves
and soft outlines were obliterated by some power-
ful agency.
There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the
prevailing atmosphere of the valley, as he launched
into an ex parte statement of the contest, with a
fluency, which, like the wind without, showed fre-
quent and unrestrained expression. He told me
what I had already learned that the boundary
line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described
in the loose phraseology of the deseno as beginning
in the valda or skirt of the hill, its precise loca-
tion long the subject of litigation. I listened and
answered with little interest, for my mind was still
distracted by the wind which swept violently by
the house, as well as by his odd face, which was
again reflected in the .resemblance that the silent
group by the fire bore toward him. He was still
talking, and the wind was yet blowing, when my
confused attention was aroused by a remark ad-
dressed to the recumbent figures.
" Now, then, which on ye '11 see the stranger up
the creek to Altascar's, to-morrow ? "
184 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
There was a general movement of opposition in
the group, but no decided answer.
" Kin you go, Kerg ? "
" Who 's to look up stock in Strarberry per-
ar-ie?"
This seemed to imply a negative, and the old
man turned to another hopeful, who was pulling
the fur from a mangy bear-skin on which he was
lying, with an expression as though it were some-
body's hair.
" Well, Tom, wot 's to hinder you from goin' ? "
" Mam 's goin' to Brown's store at sun-up, and I
s'pose I Ve got to pack her and the baby agin."
I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate
youth exhibited for the filial duty into which he
had been evidently beguiled, was one of the finest
things I had ever seen.
" Wise ? "
Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively
thrust a worn and patched boot into the discourse.
The old man flushed quickly.
" I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the
last time you war down the jiver."
" Said he would n't without'en order. Said it
was like pulling gum-teeth to get the money from
you even then."
There was a grim smile at this local hit at the
old man's parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly
the privileged wit of the family, sank back in hon-
orable retirement.
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 185
" Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you are
n't pestered with wimmin and children, p'r'aps
you'll go," said Tryan, with a nervous twitching,
intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably
mirthful.
Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said
shortly,
" Got no saddle."
" Wot 's gone of your saddle ? "
"Kerg, there," indicating his brother with a
look such as Cain might have worn at the sacrifice.
" You lie ! " returned Kerg, cheerfully.
Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flour-
ishing it around his head and gazing furiously in
the hard young faces which fearlessly met his own.
But it was only for a moment; his arm soon
dropped by his side, and a look of hopeless fatality
crossed his face. He allowed me to take the chair
from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by
the assurance that I required no guide, when the
irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice :
" Theer 's George comin' ! why don't ye ask him ?
He '11 go and introduce you to Don Fernandy's
darter, too, ef you ain't pertickler."
The laugh which followed this joke, which evi-
dently had some domestic allusion (the general
tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a
light step on the platform, and the young man en-
tered. Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and
186 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
colored ; made a shy salute and colored again, and
then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his
hands clasped lightly together and his very hand-
some bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.
Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the ro-
mantic impression he made upon me, and I took
it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and
he cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty
called him presently away.
The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no
longer resisting the prevailing influence, I silently
watched the spirting flame, listening to the wind
which continually shook the tenement. Besides
the one chair which had acquired a new impor-
tance in my eyes, I presently discovered a crazy
table in one corner, with an ink-bottle and pen ; the
latter in that greasy state of decomposition pecu-
liar to country taverns and farm-houses. A goodly
array of rifles and double-barrelled guns stocked
the corner ; half a dozen saddles and blankets lay
near, with a mild flavor of the horse about them.
Some deer and bear skins completed the inventory.
As I sat there, with the silent group around me,
the shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind
without, I found it difficult to believe I had ever
known a different existence. My profession had
often led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among
those whose unrestrained habits and easy uncon-
sciousness made me feel so lonely and uncomfort-
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 187
able. I shrank closer to myself, not without grave
doubts which I think occur naturally to people
in like situations that this was the general rule
of humanity, and I was a solitary and somewhat
gratuitous exception.
It was a relief when a laconic announcement of
supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a general move- '
ment in the family. We walked across the dark
platform, which led to another low-ceiled room.
Its entire length was occupied by a table, at the
farther end of w T hich a weak-eyed woman was al-
ready taking her repast, as she, at the same time,
gave nourishment to a weak-eyed baby. As the
formalities of introduction had been dispensed
with, and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled
to slip into a seat without discomposing or inter-
rupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace, and the
attention of the family became absorbed in bacon,
potatoes, and dried apples.
The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings
at the upper end of the table often betrayed the
presence of the " wellspring of pleasure." The
conversation generally referred to the labors of the
day, and comparing notes as to the whereabouts
of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a vast
improvement upon the previous intellectual feast,
that when a chance allusion of mine to the busi-
ness of my visit brought out the elder Tryan, the
interest grew quite exciting. I remember he in-
188 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
veighed bitterly against the system of ranch-hold-
ing by the " greasers," as he was pleased to term
the native Californians. As the same ideas have
been sometimes advanced under more pretentious
circumstances, they may be worthy of record.
" Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that
ever lay outer doors ? Whar 's the papers for it ?
Was it grants ? Mighty fine grants, most of
'em made arter the 'Merrikans got possession.
More fools the 'Merrikans for lettin' 'em hold 'em.
Wat paid for 'em ? 'Merrikan blood and money.
" Did n't they oughter have suthin out of their
native country ? Wot for ? Did they ever im-
prove ? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not
so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they
a sittin' home and smokin'. With their gold and
silver candlesticks, and missions, and crucifixens,
priests and graven idols, and sich ? Them sort
things wurent allowed in Mizzoori."
At the mention of improvements, I involun-
tarily lifted my eyes, and met the half-laughing,
half-embarrassed look of George. The act did
not escape detection, and I had at once the sat-
isfaction of seeing that the rest of the family had
formed an offensive alliance against us.
" It was agin Nater, and agin God," added
Tryan. " God never intended gold in the rocks to
be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens.
That 's why he sent 'Merrikins here. Nater never
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 189
intended such a climate for lazy lopers. She
never gin six months' sunshine to be slept and
smoked away."
How long he continued, and with what further
illustration I could not say, for I took an early op-
portunity to escape to the sitting-room. I was
soon followed -by George, who called me to an open
door leading to a smaller room, and pointed to a
bed.
"You'd better sleep there to-night," he said;
" you '11 be more comfortable, and I '11 call you
early."
I thanked him, and would have asked him
several questions which were then troubling me,
but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.
A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he
had gone. The " boys " returned, one by one, and
shuffled to their old places. A larger log was
thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed
like a furnace, but it did not seem to melt or sub-
due a single line of the hard faces that it lit. In
half an hour later, the furs which had served as
chairs by day undertook the nightly office of mat-
tresses, "and each received its owner's full-length
figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed
George. I sat there, until, wakeful and nervous, I
saw the fire fall and shadows mount the wall.
There was no sound but the rushing of the wind
and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling
190 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
the place insupportable, I seized my hat and, open-
ing the door, ran out briskly into the night.
The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen
fight with the wind, whose violence was almost
equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar faces
of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed
O
relief. I ran not knowing whither, and when I
halted, the square outline of the house was lost
in the alder-bushes. An uninterrupted plain
stretched before me, like a vast sea beaten flat by
the force of the gale. As I kept on I noticed a
slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently
my progress was impeded by the ascent of an In-
dian mound. It struck me forcibly as resembling
an island in the sea. Its height gave me a bet-
ter view of the expanding plain. But even here
I found no rest. The ridiculous interpretation
Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung
in my ears, and echoed in my throbbing pulse,
as, guided by the star, I sought the house again.
But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped
upon the platform. The door of the lower build-
ing was open, and the old man was sitting beside
the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a
look in his face as though he w^ere hunting up
prophecies against the " Greaser." I turned to
enter, but my attention was attracted by a blank-
eted figure lying beside the house, on the platform.
The broad chest heaving with healthy slumber,
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 191
and the open, honest face were familiar. It was
George, who had given up his bed to the stranger
among his people. I was about to wake him, but
he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and
hushed. And I went to bed with a pleasant im-
pression of his handsome face and tranquil figure
soothing me to sleep.
I was awakened the next morning from a sense
of lulled repose and grateful silence by the cheery
voice of George, who stood beside my bed, osten-
tatiously twirling a " riata," as if to recall the
duties of the day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I
looked around me. The wind had been magically
laid, and the sun shone warmly through the win-
dows. A dash of cold water, with an extra chill
on from the tin basin, helped to brighten me. It
was still early, but the family had already break-
fasted and dispersed, and a w^agon winding far in
the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom had
already " packed " his relatives away. I felt more
cheerful, there are few troubles Youth cannot
distance with the start of a good night's rest.
After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George,
in a few moments we were mounted and dashing
down the plain.
We followed the line of alder that defined the
creek, now dry and baked with summer's heat,
but which in winter, George told me, overflowed
192 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
its banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that
morning's ride, the far-off mountains, like silhouettes,
against the steel-blue sky, the crisp dry air, and
the expanding track before me, animated often by
the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with
jingling spurs, and picturesque with flying " riata,"
He rode a powerful native roan, wild-eyed, un-
tiring in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas !
the curves of beauty were concealed by the cum-
brous machillas of the Spanish saddle, which lev-
els all equine distinctions. The single rein lay
loosely on the cruel bit that can gripe, and, if need
be, crush the jaw it controls.
Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises
before me, as we again bear down into sunlit
space. Can this be " Chu-Chu," staid and respect-
able filly of American pedigree, " Chu-Chu," for-
getful of plank-roads and cobble-stones, wild with
excitement, twinkling her small white feet beneath
me ? George laughs out of a cloud of dust, " Give
her her head ; don't you see she likes it?." and
" Chu-Chu " seems to like it, and, whether bitten
by native tarantula into native barbarism or
emulous of the roan, " blood " asserts itself, and
in a moment the peaceful servitude of years is
beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs.
The creek widens to a deep gully. We dive into
it and up on the opposite side, carrying a moving
cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 193
scattered over the plain, grazing quietly, or banded
together in vast restless herds. George makes a
wide, indefinite sweep with the "riata," as if. to
include them all in his vaquero's loop, and says,
"Ours!"
" About how many, George ? "
"Don't know."
" How many ? "
" Well, p'r'aps three thousand head," says George,
reflecting. "We don't know, takes five men to
look 'em up and keep run."
" What are they worth ?"
" About thirty dollars a head."
I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonish-
ment at the laughing George. Perhaps a recollec-
tion of the domestic economy of the Tryan house-
hold is expressed in that look, for George averts
his eye and says, apologetically,
" I Ve tried to get the old man to sell and
build, but you know he says it ain't no use to
settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'.
In fact, he built the shanty for that purpose, lest
titles should fall through, and we 'd have to get
up and move stakes further down."
Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual
sight in a herd we are passing, and with an ex-
clamation he puts his roan into the centre of the
mass. I follow, or rather " Chu-Chu " darts after
the roan, and in a few moments we are in the
9 M
194 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.
" Toro ! " shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm,
and the band opens a way for the swinging " riata."
I can feel their steaming breaths, and their spume
is cast on " Chu-Chu's " quivering flank.
Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they ; not
such shapes as Jove might have chosen to woo a
goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of
Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines,
economically got up to meet the exigencies of a
six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to
wrestle with the distracting wind and the blind-
ing dust.
" That 's not our brand," says George ; " they 're
strange stock," and he points to what my scientific
eye recognizes as the astrological sign of Venus
deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is
chasing. But the herd are closing round us with
low mutterings, and George has again recourse to
the authoritative " Toro," and with swinging " riata "
divides the " bossy bucklers " on either side. When
we are free, and breathing somewhat more easily, I
venture to ask George if they ever attack any
one.
" Never horsemen, sometimes footmen. Not
through rage, you know, but curiosity. They think
a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a
chap afoot, they run him down and trample him
under hoof, in the pursuit of knowledge. But,"
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 195
adds George, " here 's the lower bench of the foot-
hills, and here 's Altascar's corral, and that white
building you see yonder is the casa."
A whitewashed wall enclosed- a court containing
another adobe building, baked with the solar beams
of many summers. Leaving our horses in the charge
of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking
lazily in the sun, we entered a low doorway, where
a deep shadow and an agreeable coolness fell upon
us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool
water, from its contrast with the external glare
and heat. In the centre of a low-ceiled apartment
sat an old man with a black silk handkerchief tied
about his head ; the few gray hairs that escaped
from its folds relieving his gamboge-colored face.
The odor of cigarritos was as incense added to the
cathedral gloom of the building.
As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity
to receive us, George advanced with such a heigh't-
ened color, and such a blending of tenderness and
respect in his manner, that I was touched to the
heart by so much devotion in the careless youth.
In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by the effect of
the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the
white teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped
into the corridor as we entered.
It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars
of business which would deprive the old Senor of
the greater part of that land we had just ridden
196 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But
he listened calmly, not a muscle of his dark face
stirring, and the smoke curling placidly from
his lips showed his regular respiration. When I
had finished, he offered quietly to accompany us
to the line of demarcation. George had mean-
while disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in
broken Spanish and English, in the corridor, be-
trayed his vicinity. When he returned again, a
little absent-minded, the old man, by far the cool-
est and most self-possessed of the party, extin-
guished his black silk cap beneath that stiff, un-
comely sombrero which all native Californians
affect. A serapa thrown over his shoulders hinted
that he was waiting. Horses are always ready
saddled in Spanish ranches, and in half an hour
from the time of our arrival we were again " lop-
ing " in the staring sunlight.
" But not as cheerfully as before. George and
myself were weighed down by restraint, and Altas-
car was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and
by way of a consolator}^ essay, I hinted to him
that there might be further intervention or appeal,
but the proffered oil and wine were returned with
a careless shrug of the shoulders and a senten-
tious " Que lueno ? 7 Your courts are always
just."
The Indian mound of the previous night's dis-
covery was a bearing monument of the new line,
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 197
and there we halted. We were surprised to find
the old man Tiyan waiting us. For the first time
during our interview the old Spaniard seemed
moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek.
I was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out
the corner boundaries as clearly as my recollection
served.
" The deputies will be here to-morrow to run
the lines from this initial point, and there will be
no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen."
Sefior Altascar had dismounted and was gather-
ing a few tufts of dried grass in his hands. George
and I exchanged glances. He presently arose from
his stooping posture, and, advancing to within a
few paces of Joseph Tryan, said, in a voice broken
with passion,
"And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put
you in possession of my land in the fashion of my
country."
He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.
" I don't know your courts, your judges, or your
corregidores Take the llano ! and take this
with it. May the drought seize your cattle till
their tongues hang down as long as those of your
lying lawyers ! May it be the curse and torment
of your old age, as you and yours have made it of
mine ! "
We stepped between the principal actors in this
scene, which only the passion of Altascar made
198 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill con-
cealing his triumph, interrupted :
" Let him curse on. He '11 find 'em coming home
to him sooner than -the cattle he has lost through
his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side of
the just, as well as agin all slanderers and re-
vilers."
Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the
Missourian, yet sufficiently to drive from his mind
all but the extravagant power of his native in-
vective.
" Stealer of the Sacrament ! Open not ! open
not, I say, your lying, Judas lips to me ! Ah !
half-breed, with the soul of a cayote ! Car-r-r-
ramba ! "
With his passion reverberating among the con-
sonants like distant thunder, he laid his hand
upon the mane of his horse as though it had been
the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself
into the saddle and galloped away.
George turned to me :
" Will you go back with us to-night ? "
I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures
by the fire, and the roaring wind, and hesitated.
"Well then, good by."
" Good by, George."
Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I
had not ridden far, when I turned and looked back.
The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIBLD. 199
already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust
travelled before it, and a picturesque figure occa-
sionally emerging therefrom was my last indistinct
impression of George Tryan.
PART II. IN THE FLOOD.
THREE months after the survey of the Espiritu
Santo Kancho, I was again in the valley of the
Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation
had erased the memory of that event as completely
as I supposed it had obliterated the boundary
monuments I had planted. The great flood of
1861-62 was at its height, when, obeying some
indefinite yearning, I took my carpet-bag and em-
barked for the inundated valley.
There was nothing to be seen from the bright
cabin windows of the "Golden City" but night
deepening over the water. The only sound was
the pattering rain, and that had grown monoto-
nous for the past two weeks, and did not disturb
the national gravity of my countrymen as they
silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on
errands of relief to friends and relatives wore
anxious faces, and conversed soberly on the one
absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted by
curiosity, listened eagerly to newer details. But
200 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
with that human disposition to seize upon any
circumstance that might give chance event the
exaggerated importance of instinct, I was half
conscious of something more than curiosity as an
impelling motive.
The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water,
and a leaden sky greeted us the next morning as
we lay beside the half-submerged levee of Sacra-
mento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to
convey us to the hotels was an appeal that was
irresistible. I resigned myself to a dripping rub-
ber-cased mariner called " Joe," and, wrapping my-
self in a shining cloak of the like material, about
as suggestive of warmth as court-plaster might
have been, took my seat in the stern-sheets of his
boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part
from the steamer, that to most of the passengers
was the only visible connecting link between us
and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled
away and entered the city, stemming a rapid cur-
rent as we shot the levee.
We glided up the long level of K Street, once
a cheerful, busy thoroughfare, now distressing in
its silent desolation. The turbid water which seemed
to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right
angles in sluggish rivers through the streets. Na-
ture had revenged herself on the local taste by
disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling
houses on street corners, where they presented
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 201
abrupt gables to the current, or by capsizing them
in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding
in and out of low-arched doorways. The water
was over the top of the fences surrounding well-
kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and
private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet car-
pets as well as roughly boarded floors. And a
silence quite as suggestive as the visible deso-
lation was in the voiceless streets that no longer
echoed to carriage-wheel or footfall. The low
ripple of water, the occasional splash of oars, or
the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of
life and habitation.
With such scenes before my eyes and such
sounds in my ears, as I lie lazily in the boat, is
mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to the
music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as
his brother of the Lido might improvise, but my
Yankee " Giuseppe " has the advantage of earnest-
ness and energy, and gives a graphic description
of the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds
of self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally pointing
out a balcony from which some California Bianca
or Laura had been snatched, half clothed and fam-
ished. Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and re-
fuses the proffered fare, for am I not a citizen
of San Francisco, which was first to respond to the
suffering cry of Sacramento ? and is not he, Giu-
seppe, a member of the Howard Society ? No !
9*
202 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my money.
Still, if I must spend it, there is the Howard
Society, and the women and children without food
and clothes at the Agricultural Hall.
I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to
the Hall, a dismal, bleak place, ghastly with
the memories of last year's opulence and plenty,
and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's
mite. But here Giuseppe tells me of the " Belief
Boat " which leaves for the flooded district in the
interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has
taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curi-
osity to the account of others, and am accepted of
those who go forth to succor and help the afflicted.
Giuseppe takes charge of my carpet-bag, and- does
not part from me until I stand on the slippery
deck of " Eelief Boat No. 3."
An hour later I am in the pilot-house, looking
down upon what was once the channel of a peace-
ful river. But its banks are only defined by tossing
tufts of willow washed by the long swell that
breaks over a vast inland sea. Stretches of " tule "
land fertilized by its once regular channel and
dotted by flourishing ranches are now cleanly
erased. The cultivated profile of the old land-
scape had faded. Dotted lines in symmetrical
perspective mark orchards that* are buried and
chilled in the turbid flood. The roofs of a few
farm-houses are visible, and here and there the
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 203
smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged
tenements show an undaunted life within. Cattle
and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds waiting
the fate of their companions whose carcasses drift
by us, or swing in eddies with the wrecks of barns
and out-houses. Wagons are stranded everywhere
where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the
moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering
on the deck from the lowering clouds, dashing
against the window, dripping from the willows,
hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coil-
ing, sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last
into deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their sug-
gestive quiet and concealment.
As day fades into night the monotony of this
strange prospect grows oppressive. I seek the
engine-room, and in the company of some of the
few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked
up from temporary rafts, I forget the general
aspect of desolation in their individual misery.
Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and
transfer a number of our passengers. From them
we learn how inward-bound vessels report to hav-
ing struck the well-defined channel of the Sa-
cramento, fifty milefi beyond the bar. There is
a voluntary contribution taken among the gener-
ous travellers for the use of our afflicted, and we
part company with a hearty "God speed" on
either side. But our signal-lights are not far dis-
204 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
tant before a familiar sound conies back to us,
an indomitable Yankee cheer, which scatters the
gloom.
Our course is altered, and we are steaming over
the obliterated banks far in the interior. Once or
twice black objects loom up near us, the wrecks
of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the
sky towards the north, and a few bearing stars to
guide us over the waste. As we penetrate into
shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide
our party into smaller boats, and diverge over the
submerged prairie. I borrow a pea-coat of one of
the crew, and in that practical disguise am doubt-
fully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We
give way northerly. It is quite dark yet, although
the rift of cloud has widened.
It must have been about three o'clock, and we
were lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a
clump of cotton wood, and the light of the steamer
is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the
silence is broken by the " bow oar " :
" Light ahead."
All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few
seconds a twinkling light appears, shines steadily,
and again disappears as if by tjie shifting position
of some black object apparently drifting close
upon us.
" Stern, all ; a steamer ! "
" Hold hard there ! Steamer be d d !" is the
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 205
reply of the coxswain.. " It 's a house, and a big
one too."
It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a
huge fragment of the darkness. The light comes
from a single candle, which shines through a
window as the great shape swings by. Some
recollection is drifting back to me with it, as I
listen with beating heart.
" There 's some one in it, by Heavens ! Give
way, boys, lay her alongside. Handsomely, now !
The door 's fastened ; try the window ; no ! here 's
another ! "
In another moment we are trampling in the
water, which washes the floor to the depth of sev-
eral inches. It is a large room, at the further end
of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a
blanket, holding a candle in one hand, and appar-
ently absorbed in the book he holds with the
other. I spring toward him with an exclama-
tion :
" Joseph Tryan ! "
He does not move. We gather closer to him,
and I lay my hand gently on his shoulder, and
say:
" Look up, old man, look up ! Your wife and
children, where are they ? The boys, George !
Are they here ? are they safe ? "
He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to
mine, and we involuntarily recoil before his look.
206 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
It is a calm and quiet glance, free from fear, anger,
or pain ; but it somehow sends the blood curdling
through our veins. He bowed his head over his
book again, taking no further notice of us. The
men look at me compassionately, and hold their
peace. I make one more effort :
" Joseph Tryan, don't you know me ? the sur-
veyor who surveyed your ranch, the Espiritu
Santo ? Look up, old man ! "
He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his
blanket. Presently he repeated to himself, " The
surveyor who surveyed your ranch, Espiritu
Santo," over and over again, as though it were a
lesson he was trying to fix in his memory.
I was turning sadly to the boatmen, when he
suddenly caught me fearfully by the hand and
said,
"Hush!"
We were silent.
" Listen ! " He puts his arm around my neck
and whispers in my ear, " I 'm a moving off ! "
" Moving off ? "
" Hush ! Don't speak so loud. Moving off.
Ah ! wot 's that ? Don't you hear ? there ! lis-
ten !"
We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click
beneath the floor.
" It 's them wot he sent ! Old Altascar sent.
They 've been here all night. I heard 'em first in
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 207
the creek, when they came to tell the old man to
move farther off. They came nearer and nearer.
They whispered under the door, and I saw their
eyes on the step, their cruel, hard eyes. Ah,
why don't they quit ? "
I tell the men to search the room and see if they
can find any further traces of the family, while
Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so much
like the figure I remember on the breezy night
that a superstitious feeling is fast overcoming me.
When they have returned, I tell them briefly what
I know of him, and the old man murmurs again,
" Why don't they quit, then ? They have the
stock, all gone gone, gone for the hides and
hoofs," and he groans bitterly.
" There are other boats below us. The shanty
cannot have drifted far, and perhaps the family are
safe by this time," says the coxswain, hopefully.
We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless,
and carry him to the boat. He is still grasping
the Bible in his right hand, though its strengthen-
ing grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers
in the stern as we pull slowly to the steamer, while
a pale gleam in the sky shows the coming day.
I was weary with excitement, and when we
reached the steamer, and I had seen Joseph Tryan
comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a
blanket near the boiler and presently fell asleep.
But even then the figure of the old man often started
208 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
before me, and a sense of uneasiness about George
made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams.
I was awakened at about eight o'clock in the
morning by the engineer, who told me one of the
old man's sons had been picked up and was now on
board.
" Is it George Tryan ? " I ask quickly.
" Don't know ; but he 's a sweet one, whoever he
is," adds the engineer, with a smile at some luscious
remembrance. " You '11 find him for'ard."
I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not
George, but the irrepressible Wise, sitting on a
coil of rope, a little dirtier and rather more dilapi-
dated than I can remember having seen him.
He is examining, with apparent admiration, some
rough, dry clothes that have been put out for his
disposal. I cannot help thinking that circum-
stances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerful-
ness. He puts me at my ease by at once address-
ing me :
II These are high old times, ain't they ? I say,
what do you reckon 's become* o' them thar
bound'ry moniments you stuck ? Ah 1 "
The pause which succeeds this outburst is the
effect of a spasm of admiration at a pair of high
boots, which, by great exertion, he has at last
pulled on his feet.
" So you 've picked up the ole man in the
shanty, clean crazy ? He must have been soft
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 209
to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old
woman. Did n't know me from Adam ; took me
for George ! "
At this affecting instance of paternal forgetful-
ness, Wise was evidently divided between amuse-
ment and chagrin. I took advantage of the con-
tending emotions to ask about George.
" Don't know whar he is ! If he 'd tended
stock instead of running about the prairie, packin'
off wimmin and children, he might have saved
suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I '11 bet a
cookey ! Say you," to a passing boatman, " when
are you goin' to give us some grub ? I 'm hungry
'nough to skin and eat a hoss. Eeckon I '11 turn
butcher when things is dried up, and save hides,
horns, and taller."
I could not but admire this indomitable energy,
which under softer climatic influences might have
borne such goodly fruit.
" Have you any idea what you '11 do, Wise ? " I
ask.
" Thar ain't much to do now," says the practical
young man. " I '11 have to lay over a spell, I
reckon, till things comes, straight. The land ain't
worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some
time. Wonder whar the ole man '11 drive stakes
next."
" I meant as to your father and George, Wise."
" 0, the ole man and I '11 go on to ' Miles's, ' whar
N
210 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
Tom packed the old woman and babies last week.
George '11 turn up somewhar atween this and
Altascar's, ef he ain't thar now."
I ask how the Altascars have suffered.
" Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I
should n't wonder if George helped him drive 'em
up the foot-hills. And his ' casa ' 's built too high.
0, thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah/' says
Wise, with reflective 'admiration, " those greasers
ain't the darned fools people thinks 'em. I '11 bet
thar ain't one swamped out in all'er Californy."
But the appearance of " grub," cut this rhapsody
short.
" I shall keep on a little farther," I say, " and
try to find George."
Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until
a new light dawned upon him.
" I don't think you '11 save much. What 's the
percentage, workin' on shares, eh ! "
I answer that I am only curious, which I feel
lessens his opinion of me, and with a sadder feel-
ing than his assurance of George's safety might
warrant, I walked away.
From others whom we picked up from time to
time we heard of George's self-sacrificing devo-
tion, with the praises of the many he had helped
and rescued. But I did not feel disposed to re-
turn until I had seen him, and soon prepared my-
self to take a boat to the lower "valda" of the
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 211
foot-hills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected
my arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took
a last look at the old man, who was sitting by the
furnace-fires quite passive and composed. Then
our boat-head swung round, pulled by sturdy and
willing hands.
It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind
had risen. Our course lay nearly west, and we
soon knew by the strong current that we were in
the creek of the Espiritu Santo. From time to
time the wrecks of barns were seen, and we
passed many half-submerged willows hung with,
farming implements.
We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is
the " llano de Espiritu Santo." As the wind whis-
tles by me, piling the shallower fresh water into
mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride
of October over that boundless plain, and recall
the sharp outlines of the distant hills which are
now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are
rowing silently, and I find my mind, released from
its tension, growing benumbed and depressed as
then. The water, too, is getting more shallow as
we leave the banks of the creek, and with my
hand dipped listlessly over the thwarts, I detect
the tops of chimisal, which shows the tide to have
somewhat fallen. There is a black mound, bear-
ing to the north of the line of alder, making an
adverse current, which, as we sweep to the right to
212 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
avoid, I recognize. We pull close alongside and
I call to the men to stop.
There was a stake driven near its summit with
the initials, " L. E. S. I." Tied half-way down was
a curiously worked " riata." It was George's. It
had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the
loose gravelly soil of the mound was deeply dented
with horse's hoofs. The stake was covered with
horse-hairs. It was a record, but no clew.
The wind had grown more violent, as we still
fought our way forward, resting and rowing by
, turns, and oftener " poling " the shallower surface,
but the old " valda," or bench, is still distant.
My recollection of the old survey enables me to
guess the relative position of the nieanderings of
the creek, and an occasional simple professional
experiment to determine the distance gives my
crew the fullest faith in my ability. Night over-
takes us in our impeded progress. Our condition
looks more dangerous than it really is, but I urge
the men, many of whom are still new in this mode
of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of
perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on
in this way until about eight o'clock, and ground
by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a
few hundred yards before we strike a dry trail,
and simultaneously the white walls of Altascar's
appear like a snow-bank before us. Lights are
moving in the courtyard ; but otherwise the old
tomb-like repose characterizes the building.
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. ,213
One of the peons recognized me as I entered the
court, and Altascar met me on the corridor.
I was too weak to do more than beg his hospi-
tality for the men who had dragged wearily with
me. He looked at my hand, which still un-
consciously held the broken " riata." I began,
wearily, to tell him about George and my fears,
but with a gentler courtesy than was even his
wont, he gravely laid his hand on my shoulder.
" Poco a poco Seiior, not now. You are tired,
you have hunger, you have cold. Necessary it is
you should have peace."
He took us into a small room and poured out
some French cognac, which he gave to the men
that had accompanied me. They drank and threw
themselves before the fire in the larger room. The
repose of the building was intensified that night,
and I eyen fancied that the footsteps on the cor-
ridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard's
habitual gravity was deeper ; we might have been
shut out from the world as well as the whistling
storm, behind those ancient walls with their time-
worn inheritor.
Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired.
In a few minutes two smoking dishes of " chupa "
with coffee- were placed before us, and my men
ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my ex-
citement and weariness kept down the instincts
of hunger.
214 % NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
I was sitting sadly by the fire when he re-en-
tered. .
"You have eat?"
I said, "Yes," to please him.
" Bueno, eat when you can, food and appetite
are not always."
He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity
with which most of his countrymen utter a
proverb, as though it were an experience rather
than a legend, and, taking the " riata " from the
floor, held it almost tenderly before him.
" It was made by me, Seiior."
" I kept it as a clew to him, Don Altascar," I
said. " If I could find him "
" He is here."
" Here ! and " but I could not say, " weU ! "
I understood the gravity of the old man's face, the
hushed footfalls, the tomb-like repose of the build-
ing in an electric flash of consciousness ; I held
the clew to the broken riata at last. Altascar took
my hand, and we crossed the corridor to a sombre
apartment. A few tall candles were burning in
sconces before the window.
In an alcove there was a deep bed with its
counterpane, pillows, and sheets heavily edged
with lace, in all that splendid luxury* which the
humblest of these strange people lavish upon this
single item of their household. I stepped beside
it and saw George lying, as I had seen him once
NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD. 215
before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice
than that he had known was here, and his gen-
erous heart was stilled forever.
" He was honest and brave/' said the old man,
and turned away.
There was another figure in the room ; a heavy
shawl drawn over her graceful outline, and her
long black hair hiding the hands that buried her
downcast face. I did not seem to notice her, and,
retiring presently, left the loving and loved to-
gether.
When we were again beside the crackling fire,
in the shifting shadows of the great chamber, Al-
tascar told me how he had that morning met the
horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie ;
how that, farther on, he found him lying, quite
cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his
person ; that he had probably become exhausted
in fording the creek, and that he had as probably
reached the mound only to die for want of that
help he had so freely given to others ; that, as a
last act, he had freed his horse. These incidents
were corroborated by many who collected in the
great chamber that evening, women and chil-
dren, most of them succored through the de-
voted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless
above.'
He was buried in the Indian mound, the
single spot of strange perennial greenness, which
216 NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD.
the poor aborigines had raised above the dusty
plain. A little slab of sandstone with the initials
" Gr. T." is his monument, and one of the bearings
of the initial corner of the new survey of the
" Espiritu Santo Eancho."
BOHEMIAN PAPERS
10
THE MISSION* DOLOKES.
THE Mission Dolores is destined to be " The
Last Sigh " of the native Calif ornian. When
the fast "Greaser" shall indolently give way to
the bustling Yankee, I can imagine he will, like
the Moorish King, ascend one of the Mission hills
to take his last lingering look at the hilled city.
For a long time he will cling tenaciously to Pacific
Street. He will delve in the rocky fastnesses of
Telegraph Hill until progress shall remove it. He
will haunt Vallejo Street, and those back slums
which so vividly typify the degradation of a peo-
ple ; but he will eventually make way for improve-
ment. The Mission will be last to drop from his
nerveless fingers.
As I stand here this pleasant afternoon, looking
up at the old chapel, its ragged senility con-
trasting with the smart spring sunshine, its two
gouty pillars with the plaster dropping away like
tattered bandages, its rayless windows, its crum-
bling entrances, the leper spots on its whitewashed
wall eating through the dark adobe, I give the
poor old mendicant but a few years longer to sit
by the highway and ask alms in the names of the
220 THE MISSION DOLORES.
blessed saints. Already the vicinity is haunted with
the shadow of its dissolution. The shriek of the
locomotive discords with the Angelus bell. An
Episcopal church, of a green Gothic type, with mas-
sive buttresses of Oregon pine, even now mocks its
hoary age with imitation and supplants it with a
sham. Vain, alas ! were those rural accessories, the
nurseries and market-gardens, that once gathered
about its walls and resisted civic encroachment.
They, too, are passing away. Even those queer lit-
tle adobe buildings with tiled roofs like longitudi-
nal slips of cinnamon, and walled enclosures sa-
credly guarding a few bullock horns and strips of
hide. I look in vain for the half -reclaimed Mexi-
can, whose respectability stopped at his waist, and
whose red sash under his vest was the utter undo-
ing of his black broadcloth. I miss, too, those
black-haired women, with swaying unstable busts,
whose dresses were always unseasonable in texture
and pattern ; whose wearing of a shawl was a ter-
rible awakening from the poetic dream of the
Spanish mantilla. Traces of another nationality
are visible. The railroad " navvy " has builded his
shanty near the chapel, and smokes his pipe in the
Posada. Gutturals have taken the place of linguals
and sibilants ; I miss the half-chanted, half-drawled
cadences that used to mingle with the cheery " All
aboard " of the stage-driver, in those good old days
when the stages ran hourly to the Mission, and a
THE MISSION DOLORES. 221
trip thither was an excursion. At the very gates
of the temple, in the place of those "who sell
doves for sacrifice," a vender of mechanical
spiders 'has halted with his unhallowed wares.
Even the old Padre last type of the Missionary,
and descendant of the good Junipero I cannot
find to-day ; in his stead a light-haired Celt is
reading a lesson from a Vulgate that is wonderfully
replete with double r's. Gentle priest, in thy R-
isons, let the stranger and heretic be remembered.
I open a little gate and enter the Mission Church-
yard. There is no change here, though perhaps
the graves lie closer together. A willow-tree,
growing beside the deep, brown wall, has burst
into tufted plumes in the fulness of spring. The
tall grass-blades over each mound show a strange
quickening of the soil below. It is pleasanter
here than on the bleak mountain seaward, where
distracting winds continually bring the strife and
turmoil of the -ocean. The Mission hills lovingly
embrace the little cemetery, whose decorative taste
is less ostentatious. The foreign flavor is strong ;
here are never-failing garlands of immortelles, with
their sepulchral spicery ; here are little cheap
medallions of pewter, with the adornment of three
black tears, that would look like the three of clubs,
but that the simple humility of the inscription
counterbalances all sense of the ridiculous. Here
are children's graves with guardian angels of great
222 THE MISSION DOLORES.
specific gravity ; but here, too, are the little one's
toys in a glass case beside them. Here is the av-
erage quantity of execrable original verses ; but
one stanza over a sailor's grave is striking,
for it expresses a hope of salvation through the
" Lord High Admiral Christ " ! Over the foreign
graves there is a notable lack of scriptural quota-
tion, and an increase, if I may say it, of humanity
and tenderness. I cannot help thinking that too
many of my countrymen are influenced by a mor-
bid desire to make a practical point of this occa-
sion, and are too apt hastily to crowd a whole life
of omission into the culminating act. But when
I see the gray immortelles crowning a tombstone, I
know I shall find the mysteries of the resurrec-
tion shown rather in symbols, and only the love
taught in His new commandment left for the
graphic touch. But "they manage these things
better in France."
During my purposeless ramble the sun has been
steadily climbing the brown wall of the church,
and the air seems to grow cold and raw. The
bright green dies out of the grass, and the rich
bronze comes down from the wall. The willow-
tree seems half inclined to doff its plumes, and
wears the dejected air of a broken faith and vio-
lated trust. The spice of the immortelles mixes
with the incense that steals through the open win-
THE MISSION DOLORES.
dow. Within, the barbaric gilt and crimson look
cold and cheap in this searching air; by this light
the church certainly is old and ugly. I cannot
help wondering whether the old Fathers, if they
ever revisit the scene of their former labors, in their
larger comprehensions, view with regret the im-
pending change, or mourn over the day when the
Mission Dolores shall appropriately come to grief.
JOHN CHINAMAN.
THE expression of the Chinese face in the
aggregate is neither cheerful nor happy. In
an acquaintance of half a dozen years, I can
only recall one or two exceptions to this rule.
There is an abiding consciousness of degradation,
a secret pain or self-humiliation visible in the
lines of the mouth and eye. Whether it is only
a modification of Turkish gravity, or whether it
is the dread Valley of the Shadow of the Drug
through which they are continually straying, I
cannot say. They seldom smile, and their laugh-
ter is of such an extraordinary and sardonic na-
ture so purely a mechanical spasm, quite inde-
pendent of any mirthful attribute that to this
day I am doubtful whether I ever saw a Chinaman
laugh. A theatrical representation by natives,
one might think, would have set my mind at ease
on this point ; but it did not. Indeed, a new dif-
ficulty presented itself, the impossibility of de-
termining whether the performance was a tragedy
or farce. I thought I detected the low comedian
in an active youth who turned two somersaults,
and knocked everybody down on entering the
JOHN CHINAMAN. 225
stage. But, unfortunately, even this classic resem-
blance to the legitimate farce of our civilization
was deceptive. Another brocaded actor, who rep-
resented the hero of the play, turned three somer-
saults, and not only upset my theory and his fel-
low-actors at the same time, but apparently run
a-muck behind the scenes for some time after-
ward. I looked around at the glinting white
teeth to observe the effect of these two palpable
hits. They were received with equal acclamation,
and apparently equal facial spasms. One or two
beheadings which enlivened the play produced
the same sardonic effect, and left upon my mind
a painful anxiety to know what was the serious
business of life in China. It was noticeable, how-
ever, that my unrestrained laughter had a discord-
ant effect, and that triangular eyes sometimes
turned ominously toward the " Fanqui devil " ;
but as I retired discreetly before the play was
finished, there were no serious results. I have
only given the above as an instance of the impos-
sibility of deciding upon the outward and superfi-
cial expression of Chinese mirth. Of its inner
and deeper existence I have some private doubts.
An audience that will view with a serious aspect
the hero, after a frightful and agonizing death,
get up and quietly walk off the stage, cannot be
said to have remarkable perceptions of the ludi-
crous.
10* o
226 JOHN CHINAMAN.
I have often been struck with, the delicate plia-
bility of the Chinese expression and taste, that
might suggest a broader and deeper criticism than
is becoming these pages. A Chinaman will adopt
the American costume, and wear it with a taste of
color and detail that will surpass those " native,
and to the manner born." To look at a Chinese
slipper, one might imagine it impossible to shape
the original foot to anything less cumbrous and
roomy, yet a neater-fitting boot than that belong-
ing to the Americanized Chinaman is rarely seen
on this side of the Continent. When the loose
sack or paletot takes the place of his brocade
blouse, it is worn with a refinement and grace that
might bring a jealous pang to the exquisite of our
more refined civilization. Pantaloons fall easily
and naturally over legs that have known unlimited
freedom and bagginess, and even garrote collars
meet correctly around sun-tanned throats. The
new expression seldom overflows in gaudy cravats.
I will back my Americanized Chinaman against
any neophyte of European birth in the choice of
that article. While in our own State, the Greaser
resists one by one the garments of the Northern
invader, and even wears the livery of his conqueror
with a wild and buttonless freedom, the China-
man, abused and degraded as he is, changes
by correctly graded transition to the garments of
Christian civilization. There is but one article of
JOHN CHINAMAN. 227
European wear that he avoids. These Bohemian
eyes have never yet been pained by the spectacle
of a tall hat on the head of an intelligent China-
man.
My acquaintance with John has been made up
of weekly interviews, involving the adjustment of
the washing accounts, so that I have not been able
to study his character from a social view-point or
observe him in the privacy of the domestic circle.
I have gathered enough to justify me in believing
him to be generally honest, faithful, simple, and
painstaking. Of his simplicity let me record an
instance where a sad and civil young Chinaman
brought me certain shirts with most of the but-
tons missing and others hanging on delusively by
a single thread. In a moment of unguarded irony
I informed him that unity would at least have
been preserved if the buttons were removed alto-
gether. He smiled sadly and went away. I
thought I had hurt his feelings, until the next
week when he brought me my shirts with a look of
intelligence, and the buttons carefully and totally
erased. At another time, to guard against his
general disposition to carry off anything as soiled
clothes that he thought could hold water, I re-
quested him to always wait until he saw me.
Coming home late one evening, I found the house-
hold in great consternation, over an immovable
Celestial who had remained seated on the front
228 JOHN CHINAMAN.
door-step during the day, sad and submissive, firm
but also patient, and only betraying any animation
or token of his mission when he saw me coming.
This same Chinaman evinced some evidences of
regard for a little girl in the family, who in her
turn reposed such faith in his intellectual qualities
as to present him with a preternaturally unin-
teresting Sunday-school book, her own property.
This book John made a point of carrying osten-
tatiously with him in his weekly visits. It ap-
peared usually on the top of the clean clothes,
and was sometimes painfully clasped outside of
the big bundle of solid linen. Whether John be-
lieved he unconsciously imbibed some spiritual
life through its pasteboard cover, as the Prince in
the Arabian Nights imbibed the medicine through
the handle of the mallet, or whether he wished to
exhibit a due sense of gratitude, or whether he
hadn't any pockets, I have never been able to
ascertain. In his turn he would sometimes cut
marvellous imitation roses from carrots for his lit-
tle friend. I am inclined to think that the few
roses strewn in John's path were such scentless
imitations. The thorns only were real. From the
persecutions of the young and old of a certain
class, his life was a torment. I don't know what
was the exact philosophy that Confucius taught,
but it is to be hoped that poor John in his perse-
cution is still able to detect the conscious hate
JOHN CHINAMAN. 229
and fear with which inferiority always regards the
possibility of even-handed justice, and which is
the key-note to the vulgar clamor about servile
and degraded races.
FKOM A BACK WINDOW.
IKEMEMBEK that long ago, as a sanguine and
trustful child, I became possessed of a highly
colored lithograph, representing a fair Circassian
sitting by a window. The price I paid for this
work of art may have been extravagant), even in
youth's fluctuating slate-pencil currency ; but the
secret joy I felt in its possession knew no pecuni-
ary equivalent. It was not alone that Nature in
Circassia lavished alike upon the cheek of beauty
and the vegetable kingdom that most expensive of
colors, Lake ; nor was it that the rose which
bloomed beside the fair Circassian's window had no
visible stem, and was directly grafted upon a mar-
ble balcony; but it was because it embodied an
idea. That idea was a hinting of my Fate. I felt
that somewhere a young and fair Circassian was
sitting by a window looking out for me. The
idea of resisting such an array of charms and
color never occurred to me, and to my honor be it
recorded, that during the feverish period of adoles-
cence I never thought of averting my destiny.
But as vacation and holiday came and went, and
as my picture at first grew blurred, and then faded
FROM A BACK WINDOW. 231
quite away between the Eastern and Western con-
tinents in my atlas, so its charm seemed mysteri-
ously to pass away. When I became convinced
that few females, of Circassian or other origin, sat
pensively resting their chins on their henna-tinged
nails, at their parlor windows, I turned my atten-
tion to back windows. Although the fair Circas-
sian has not yet burst upon me with open shutters,
some peculiarities not unworthy of note have
fallen under my observation. This knowledge has
not been gained without sacrifice. I have made
myself familiar with back windows and their
prospects, in the weak disguise of seeking lodg-
ings, heedless of the suspicious glances of land-
ladies and their evident reluctance to show them.
I have caught cold by long exposure to draughts.
I have become estranged from friends by uncon-
sciously walking to their back windows during a
visit, when the weekly linen hung upon the line,
or where Miss Fanny (ostensibly indisposed) actu-
ally assisted in the laundry, and Master Bobby, in
scant attire, disported himself on the area railings.
But I have thought of Galileo, and the invariable
experience of all seekers and discoverers of truth
has sustained me.
Show me the back windows of a man's dwelling,
and I will tell you his character. The = rear of a
house only is sincere. The attitude of deception
kept up at the front windows leaves the back area
232 FROM A BACK WINDOW.
defenceless. The world enters at the front door,
but nature comes out at the back passage. That
glossy, well-brushed individual, who lets himself
in with a latch-key at the front door at night, is a
very different being from the slipshod wretch who
growls of mornings for hot water at the door of the
kitchen. The same with Madame, whose contour
of figure grows angular, whose face grows pallid,
whose hair comes down, and who looks some ten
years older through the sincere medium of a back
window. No wonder that intimate friends fail to
recognize each other in this dos a dos position.
You may imagine yourself familiar with the silver
door-plate and bow- windows of the mansion where
dwells your Saccharissa ; you may even fancy you
recognize her graceful figure between the lace cur-
tains of the upper chamber which you fondly
imagine to be hers ; but you shall dwell for months
in the rear of her dwelling and within whispering
distance of her bower, and never know it. You
shall see her with a handkerchief tied round her
head in confidential discussion with the butcher,
and know her not. You shall hear her voice in
shrill expostulation with her younger brother, and
it shall awaken no familiar response.
I am writing at a back window. As I prefer
the warmth of my coal-fire to the foggy freshness
of the afternoon breeze that rattles the leafless
shrubs in the garden below me, I have my window-
FROM A BACK WINDOW. 233
sash, closed ; consequently, I miss much of the
shrilly altercation that has been going on in the
kitchen of No. 7 just opposite. I have heard frag-
ments of an entertaining style of dialogue usually
known as " chaffing," which has just taken place
between Biddy in No. 9 and the butcher who
brings the dinner. I have been pitying the chilled *
aspect of a poor canary, put out to taste the fresh
air, from the window of No. 5. I have been watch-
ing and envying, I fear the real enjoyment of
two children raking over an old dust-heap in the
alley, containing the waste and debris of all the
back yards in the neighborhood. What a wealth
of soda-water bottles and old iron they have ac-
quired ! But I am waiting for an even more fa-
miliar prospect from my back window. I know
that later in the afternoon, when the evening paper
comes, a thickset, gray-haired man will appear in
his shirt-sleeves at the back door of No. 9, and,
seating himself on the door-step, begin to read.
He lives in a pretentious house, and I hear he is a
rich man. But there is such humility in his atti-
tude, and such evidence of gratitude at being al-
lowed to sit outside of his own house and read his
paper in his shirt-sleeves, that I can picture his
domestic history pretty clearly. Perhaps he is fol-
lowing some old habit of humbler days. Perhaps
he has entered into an agreement with his wife not
to indulge his disgraceful habit in-doors. He does
234 FROM A BACK WINDOW.
not look like a man who could be coaxed into a
dressing-gown. In front of his own palatial resi-
dence, I know him to be a quiet and respectable
middle-aged business-man, but it is from my back
window that my heart w T arms toward him in his
shirt-sleeved simplicity. So I sit and watch him
in the twilight as he reads gravely, and wonder
sometimes, when he looks up, squares his chest, and
folds his paper thoughtfully over his knee, whether
he does n't fancy he hears the letting down of bars,
or the tinkling of bells, as the cows come home
and stand lowing for him at the gate.
BOONDEK.
INEVEB knew how the subject of this memoir
came to attach himself so closely to the affec-
tions of my family. He was not a prepossessing
dog. He was not a dog of even average birth and
breeding. His pedigree was involved in the deep-
est obscurity. He may have had brothers and
sisters, but in the whole range of my canine ac-
quaintance (a pretty extensive one), I never de-
tected any of Boonder's peculiarities in any other
of his species. His body was- long, and his fore-
legs and hind-legs were very wide apart, as though
Nature originally intended to put an extra pair be-
tween them, but had unwisely allowed herself to
be persuaded out of it. This peculiarity was an-
noying on cold nights, as it always prolonged the
interval of keeping the door open for Boonder's
ingress long enough to allow two or three dogs of
a reasonable length to enter. Boonder's feet were
decided ; his toes turned out considerably, and in
repose his favorite attitude was the first position
of dancing. Add to a pair of bright eyes ears
that seemed to belong to some other dog, and a
symmetrically pointed nose that fitted all aper-
236 BOONDEK.
tures like a pass-key, and you have Boonder as we
knew him.
I am inclined to think that his popularity was
mainly owing to his quiet impudence. His ad-
vent in the family was that of an old member,
who had been absent for a short time, but had
returned to familiar haunts and associations. In
a Pythagorean point of view this might have been
the case, but I cannot recall any deceased member
of the family who was in life partial to bone-
burying (though it might be post mortem a con-
sistent amusement), and this was Boonder's great
weakness. He was at first discovered coiled up
on a rug in an upper chamber, and was the least
disconcerted of the entire household. From that
moment Boonder became one of its recognized
members, and privileges, often denied the most in-
telligent and valuable of his species, were qui-
etly taken by him and submitted to by us. Thus,
if he were found coiled up in a clothes-basket,
or any article of clothing assumed locomotion
on its own account, we only said, " 0, it 's Boon-
der," with a feeling of relief that it was nothing
worse.
I have spoken of his fondness for bone-burying.
It could not be called an economical faculty, for he
invariably forgot the locality of his treasure, and
covered the garden with purposeless holes ; but
although the violets and daisies were not improved
BOONDER. 237
by Boonder's gardening, no one ever thought of
punishing him. He became a synonyme for Fate ;
a Boonder to be grumbled at, to be accepted phil-
osophically,, but never to be averted. But al-
though he was not an intelligent dog, nor an orna-
namental dog, he possessed some gentlemanly
instincts. When he performed his only feat,
begging upon his hind legs (and looking remarka-
bly like a penguin), ignorant strangers would
offer him crackers or cake, which he did n't like, as
a reward of merit. Boonder always made a great
show of accepting the proffered dainties, and even
made hypocritical contortions as if swallowing,
but always deposited the morsel when he was
unobserved in the first convenient receptacle,
usually the visitor's overshoes.
In matters that did not involve courtesy, Boon-
der was sincere in his likes and dislikes. He
was instinctively opposed to the railroad. When
the track was laid through our street, Boon-
der maintained a defiant attitude toward every
rail as it went down, and resisted the cars shortly
after to the fullest extent of his lungs. I have
a vivid recollection of seeing him, on the day
of the trial trip, come down the street in front
of the car, barking himself out of all shape,
and thrown back several feet by the recoil of
each bark. But Boonder was not the only one
who has resisted innovations, or has lived to see
238 BOONDER.
the innovation prosper and even crush But I
am anticipating. Boonder had previously resisted
the gas, but although he spent one whole day in
angry altercation with the workmen, leaving
his bones unburied and bleaching in the sun,
somehow the gas went in. The Spring Valley
water was likewise unsuccessfully opposed, and
the grading of an adjoining lot was for a long
time a personal matter between Boonder and the
contractor.
These peculiarities seemed to evince some de-
cided character and embody some idea. A pro-
longed debate in the family upon this topic re-
sulted in an addition to his name, we called
him " Boonder the Conservative," with a faint
acknowledgment of his fateful power. But, al-
though Boonder had his own way, his path was
not entirely of roses. Thorns sometimes pricked
his sensibilities. When certain minor chords were
struck on the piano, Boonder was always painfully
affected and howled a remonstrance. If he were
removed for company's sake to the back yard, at
the recurrence of the provocation, he would go his
whole length (which was something) to improvise
a howl that should reach the performer. But we
got accustomed to Boonder, and as we were fond
of music the playing went on.
One morning Boonder left the house in good
spirits with his regular bone in his mouth, and
BOONDER. 239
apparently the usual intention of burying it. The
next day he was picked up lifeless on the track,
run over apparently by the first car that went out
of the depot.
THE END,
Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
,\
