Under the sunset

aaxESfe^

LIBRIS

Under the Sunset

EDITED BY
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

AND
HENRY MILLS ALDEN

Harper & Brothers Publishers

New York and London

Copyright, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1904, 1905, 1906 by
HARPER & BROTHERS.

All rights nserveJ.

GRACE ELLERY CHANNING

THE END OF THE JOURNEY

THOMAS A. JANVIER
THE SAGE-BRUSH HEN

ELIA W. PEATTIE

A MADONNA OF THE DESERT

MARIE MANNING

THE PROPHETESS OF THE LAND

OF NO-SMOKE

PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS
A LITTLE PIONEER

ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE
BACK TO INDIANA

CHARLES A. EASTMAN, M.D.
THE GRA Y CHIEFTAIN

ZOE DANA UNDERHILL

THE INN OF SAN JACINTO

MAURICE KINGSLEY

TIO JUAN

JOSIAH FLYNT

JAMIE THE KID

274303

Introduction

Undoubtedly it was the work of Bret
Harte, bold in action, high in color, and
simple in motive, which established an
ideal of the Farthest West in literature.
Europe, where he is still better known
than any other American writer, still
clings to that ideal; it keeps the fancy
of the English as well as the Germans,
the Russians, and the French. But
American art, to which the West is bet
ter known with its changes from the
gold-seeking days to those of the settled
industries, has refined upon that ideal.
Something vastly more complex speaks
to us from both the hither and the
thither slopes of the Sierras. The plains
are conscious of their mysticism; the
wild nature itself seeks a voice in the
communion of savage man and savage
beast. The old rollicking humor finds
vent yet in temperament and incident,
and Mr. Janvier's heroine suggests the

vi Introduction

earlier heroines of the first master; but
how far from his are such types as " The
Madonna of the Desert" and "The
Prophetess of the Land of No Smoke!"
The delicate divinations of Mrs. Ellery
Channing, the close, firm study of Mr.
Mighels in frontier character, are equal
ly surprising cventuations in fiction
dealing with life in the region of Harte's
during and once fresh conventions. The
homesickness aching through Mr.
Peake's pathetic story of the returning
exiles is all as different from the primal
strain of hilarious fatalism, of melo
dramatic incident, as it is from the sad,
plain dread fulness of Mr. Kingsley's
tragedy, or Mrs. UnderhiU's round, old-
fashioned supernaturalism; and how re
mote in temperament is Mr. Flynt's tale
of the boy tramp " beating " his way
back to the States from Dr. Eastman's
poetic piece of animism in " The Gray
Chieftain."

The things are convincingly alike in
their several excellence, and in their
varying truth to the farther and nearer
lands Under the Sunset. They arc not
only important now — fine art, genuine
motive, original spirit — but they are ex
tremely interesting and significant as
suggestions of the great work to be done

Introduction vii

in and about a region of America where
the completion of the interoceanic com
munications and the drawing together
of East and West seemed to paralyze the
nascent consciousness of the Pacific
shore in literature. Finally, in the im
mense geographical range of these ad
mirable stories, we have some faint in
dications of the vastness as well as the
richness of the field they touch.

W. D. H.

The End of the Journey

BY GRACE ELLERY CHAINING

THE train, a local, drew up to the
primitive station with a ruder jolt
and a shrieking whistle, and the
woman got out. She stood a moment
on the platform, looking off at the brown
and dusty landscape, — -it was summer
and the land was dry, — her face, the
while, arming silently for an approach
ing ordeal.

It had been a finely modelled face, to
begin with; now it was as finely scored,
with little lines here and there about
the corners of the eyes and lips, as if
the engraver Sorrow had followed the
sculptor Life.

She had probably never been beautiful,
but beautiful women would have ex
changed with her for that something else
which she was, and discerning women
would have bartered their fine clothes
for her secret of wearing simple ones.
Her soft, excellently brushed hair was

2 v ; : : H* rpef^s Novelettes

thinly veined with gray; her costume
was a darker gray; her gloves, fitted to
the long hands within, unfashionably
dainty. In brief, a lady, before the word
was spoiled. Equally unmistakably, a lady
at odds with her present errand, whatever
that might be. The patient restraint
of the fine rrouth narrowly controlled
a complete impatience, and the very car
riage of her body and the height at which
she held her head seemed in a manner
to protest against some inner compulsion,
— the distaste was visible through all the
weariness cf her eyes, gazing from the
brown hills to the browner plains at
their feet.

There was no one to meet her — which
was not surprising, since she knew no
one. — and after a moment's doubtful
consulting of landmarks she set off down
a long road opposite the station, lifting
her skirt in one hand to clear the ankle-
deep adobe dust, while with the finger
tips of the other she held — as we hold
what we do not hold willingly — a small
package, elaborately tied and sealed.

One house succeeded another at long
intervals filled with straggling orange
and lemon groves. At the eighth of
these, and fully a quarter of a mile
from the station, she hesitated a moment

The End of the Journey 3

before passing through the opening in
the neglected cypress hedge and up the
narrow path towards the house, unpaint-
ed and low, with. the wide Californian
porch and running vines which render
the commonplace of the West so much
more tolerable than the commonplace of
the East. -'

It was a spot not incapable of charm,
for there were shade-trees and growing
things, but the drought had been at
work, and the air of barren living some
how diffused itself mutely through the
patch of drying vegetables and the shriv
elled leaves of the deciduous growth to
the house beyond. Even the dustless
peppers looked dusty, thin, and forlorn.

The woman stopped short midway of
the path. Her lips twitched and a new
look passed into her eyes — keyed to si
lent endurance. The fastidious distaste
of the moment before deepened into a
revolt of her whole being — a revolt of
race, — smiting her to a sudden impulse
of sharp anger, followed by pity as sharp.

"Poor boy!" — it was only a muttered
sound, but she feared she had cried it
aloud; and closing her lips again in
their habitual line, she went on up the
path, with a sigh like a suppressed sob,
carrying her head an unconscious inch

4 Harper's Novelettes

higher than before, her finger-tips tight
ening their protesting clutch.

Evidently she had been expected, for
a younger woman appeared at the door
and came out on the porch. For a mo
ment they gazed at each other from the
top and bottom of the steps before the
elder woman spoke.

"You are Mrs. Hallette?"
"Yes, — and I expect you are his
mother?"

" I am his mother."
They gazed at each other again.
"Won't you come up and sit down 2"
said the younger woman. She led the
way into a small room opening from the
porch and pushed forward a chair to
the visitor, seating herself with a little
fling in one opposite.

^ There was something sullen in her
air — a mixture of defiance, embarrass
ment, and pride. Her heavy, dark, pret
ty hair— pretty, though not fine— was
rolled in the Pompadour mode of the
moment about her heavily round, youth
ful face. The face was not unpretty,
either, in its softly massed contours and
clear coloring. It was not extremely
young, yet there was something almost
childlike about it, and it had the fresh
vitality of a not too nervous race — the

The End of the Journey 5

look one sees in the best peasant stock
of Europe or occasionally among our
backwoods girls. Her curved body had
the same vital attraction; it would bet
ter have become one of the white-yoked,
full-sleeved peasant costumes than it did
the conventional shirt-waist and skirt
she wore. There was a ring with a stone
above the plain wedding-band on her
brown, supple, capable worker's hand,
and a prettily enamelled watch at her
belt. The whole impression registered
itself in an instant on the sensitive brain
opposite.

The other had been surveying her
equally, with a kind of fascinated gaze.

" I should have known you anywhere
for his mother," she said. "You look
so like him."

"Yes ?"— the fine eyebrows lifted a little.
" The resemblance is not usually thought
to be so strong." It was as if she re
pelled it, as bringing her indefinitely
nearer to something she shrank from;
and then becoming suddenly aware of
that instinct in herself and startled by it,
she spoke again, hastily and with extreme
gentleness. It was not her fault that the
very tones of her voice seemed only to
accentuate the gulf between herself and
the other speaker. A voice, above all

6 Harper's Novelettes

things, is the gift of centuries. Beautiful
voices, it is true, may be found anywhere,
but one kind of beautiful voice is the
product of ages of gentle speaking only.

" I am the bearer of a message from
— my son; he wished me to give you
this," — and again it was not her fault
that, her finger-tips conveyed their protest
faintly through their very manner of
offering the package.

" Thank you, — he wrote he'd send it,"
said the younger woman, coloring slight
ly. She laid it unopened on her lap and
returned to her fascinated study of the
woman opposite.

" Perhaps you will kindly see that it is
— all right; he sealed it himself."

The other colored again. " I guess it
isn't necessary — if he sent it — and you
brought it."

The pathetically clumsy intention of
the phrase did not soften the face of
the elder woman; she acknowledged it
with a very slight bending of the head.

" I was also, — he wished me to bid you
good-by."

The younger woman showed a shade
of surprise. " Won't he come at all him
self, then?"

" You don't seem to understand " — the
low voice was sharp with intensity of

The End of the Journey J

restrained feeling — "that he — has been
very ill!"

For the first time the impassive lines
of the other's face showed disturbance;
her lips trembled slightly, and she cast a
vaguely troubled glance out of eyes like a
frightened animal's at the elder woman's,
which met hers with a hard brightness.

"No," she said, "I didn't know; I'm
sorry. I thought he hadn't seemed quite
himself for some time, — that maybe that
was why he acted so strange."

"'Acted so strange!' — ( not quite him
self!' Don't you know — couldn't you
see he was frightfully ill — for — for
months?" The words were jerked out
with terrible intensity, between short,
controlled breaths, but the voice never
lifted, and the gloved hands lay quiet
in the speaker's lap.

In spite of their implication, the wom
an at whom they were directed did not
seem angered by them, but only vaguely
troubled, as before.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "He's
taken it very hard; — he don't seem to —
to have had any experience."

The elder woman sat back suddenly
in her chair, as if something had broken
which had heretofore held her upright.

" No," she said, in a painfully quiet

8 Harper's Novelettes

voice ; " as you say, — he had had no ex
perience. He thought the whole thing
was real."

To her surprise, the shaft went home.
The other drew herself up, flushing
crimson, — and in so doing she became
very handsome.

" I suppose you think I'm all to blame.
Mothers always do. But I was in earnest
too; — I thought it was all real. Those
things will happen, you know."

The delicate stone face opposite im
mutably denied any such knowledge,
"Those things" happened sometimes in
the tenements, she would have told you;
not in her world. But the other went
on, oblivious, warming into a kind of
effective energy.

"He took a great deal for granted
from the first — but I did care; he wasn't
just like any one I'd ever known; we
were interested in the same things, — and
I thought at the time I cared more than
I did. Anyway" — she wound up with
vigor — "he took a great deal on himself
to tell you about it."

The elder woman winced ever so
slightly. " I told you he was very ill."

"And I suppose you blame me for it
all?" — the eyes, no longer like a fright
ened animal's, challenged hers with a

The End of the Journey 9

certain honest resentment, and the elder
woman drew a sharp breath.

" I blame you for your lack of human
ity, — for your unkindness, — for failing
him when you had brought him to — to
such a pass. I don't judge about the
rest, — perhaps you couldn't help it —
either of you; I don't know, — I don't
judge, — I don't want to judge. But to
let him hang on in that miserable way, —
not to see that it was ruining him — not
to know — not to care — not to have com
mon pity, — common humanity, — after —
after that — " She broke off suddenly,
lifting her head and looking away from
the woman, her lips set in one white line.

"I didn't understand he was so bad
off," said the other, almost humbly, and
the hearer made a dumb gesture of re-
linquishment. What was the use indeed ?
She could not understand. It was all
contained in that.

The elder woman sat silent.

" I suppose he hates me now, too ?"

"He has never said one word about
you which was not beautiful," — still in
that painfully quiet tone. " I told you,
— he believed the whole thing."

Again it was a surprise to her when the
face opposite broke suddenly up into a
chaos of rudimentary emotions and the

io Harper's Novelettes

woman burst into tears. Her visitor sur
veyed in apathetic astonishment. She
had really cared, then? Some feeling
did reside under that envelope of sturdy
well-being1, — that hide of the spirit?

The storm was quickly over. With a
vigorous touch the young woman wiped
away the tears, murmuring a word half
protest and half apology.

" You wouldn't understand ; — we were
raised different, I expect. You wouldn't
understand."

The abrupt throwing back of her own
conclusion of a moment ago struck tht>
elder woman. She cast a sharp glance
at the face before her, still quivering
with feeling through all its curious
settled submission. Not understand!
What least aspect of the whole tragedy
was there that she did not understand
only too well, she wondered with bitter
ness. What other brain ached like hers
with limitless capacity for understanding,
— for weighing to its final atom every
wretched phase of the uncomplex drama
and counting its whole intricate cost?
Not understand!

" There's something he left here — if
you don't mind taking it," said the other,
still submissively, and the elder woman
made a mechanical gesture of assent.

The End of the Journey n

" You wouldn't understand," — the
words continued to sound in her ears,
Tacitly excusing had been the woman's
tone, in contrast to her own uxmttered
accusation, but the words rankled none
the less, — perhaps all the more. She sat
there repeating numbly the irritating
phrase, even while she said to herself
that it did not matter — that nothing mat
tered; and her unseeing eyes wandered
about the room, till across their blank
field of vision another iteration pressed
home to her brain.

What was so familiar — so insistently
familiar — about this room? She roused
herself keenly now, and found an imme
diate answer. Object after object claim
ed her, — things dear, things alive, things
eloquent, fragments of home, fragments
of her son's home, things that were like
bits of the boy himself, — they were
everywhere, and crying aloud after the
manner of dumb things.

She was on her feet in a moment.
There was the Madonna bought by the
boy's father when the boy was born;
it had always hung above his bed.
There was his favorite " Sleeping Faun,"
bought the year they went abroad after
his triumphal college Commencement;
the rug picked up in the bazars of Cairo

12 Harper's Novelettes

was there. And there, doing duty as a
paper-weight, was the carved shepherd
boy from the Swiss canton; little old
sketches, — a Venetian vase, — the room
was full of the boy! And not only the
boy. She was a woman of fetishes — a
woman who had lost much — and to whom
her dead lived again in their dumb pos
sessions; she walked to the bookcase and
took down book after book with a rapid
hand. Here was his father's Kuskin,—
his own favorite Shelley, — his Emerson
(another gift, that, from father to son) ;
and here — she had not thought it pos
sible, even in the pang of recognition —
here, dim with three generations of
handling, its priceless binding fit casket
for the treasure of the title-page within,
where the dedication to the boy's great
grandfather, from such a hand on such
a glorious date, made in itself a heritage
of pride, — here, dim crimson in its su
perb age, was the family Plutarch.
It had been put in the boy's proud hands
by his father as a graduation gift.

Scarlet lines struck across her cheek.
For a moment she thought of him not
as a mother thinks of her son, but as a
woman of race thinks of the man who
betrays it. Then something carried her
indignant eyes to the shelf above.

The End of the Journey 13

There was a little clock on it— a simple,
homely thing, ticking away cheerfully.
That too was his ; it had been given him
to cheer the lagging hours of a childish
convalescence, and it had been his fond
fancy to keep it with him ever since.
He had carried it to college; he had
taken it to Europe; he had brought it
here. The mother stood looking and
looking at it, but she did not touch it
with her yearning fingers; something
interposed between. Her face was
changed when she turned away and in
cluded the whole room once more in her
lingering gaze from object to object. A
poor, bare little room — without these
things; a room the poor, foolish, but
magnificently loving boy had trans
formed with his treasure, bringing it
where his heart always was, seeking in
stinctively to enclose this woman in the
home to which he dreamed of one day
bringing her. It invested his folly with
a certain dignity. At least he had loved
as became him and his kind, unsordidly,
uncalculatingly, with a high belief in
what he loved; and in the wreck of his
youth there had been something his
mother could respect.

She heard him fondly dwelling on the
qualities of mind and heart of this worn-

14 Harper's Novelettes

an, — the thirst he ascribed to her for
books, pictures, all the adornments of
that life to which he had been born.
She had "never had a gift till he gave
her one," — she lacked "nothing but op
portunity to make her his mother's in
tellectual equal." And so — and so he
had brought her the Plutarch.

She was standing gazing at it again
where she had replaced it on the shelf,
when the other returned with a little
package. Mechanically she received it
into her own hand; for the first time
she was observing that the woman's fore
head was good.

Meantime a wave of that ready color
of hers had swept into the younger wom
an's face ; she had caught, as she entered,
the other's focussed gaze.

"I expect," she exclaimed, and it was
plain the shock of the idea was new
to her, "you think I ought to give all
these back !"

In their turn her eyes made that jour
ney about the room, but leaping with the
swiftness of familiarity from one dear
object to another. How dear was easy
to be seen; it was all a little world of
delicate beauty and rich possession which
slipped inch by inch away from her as
the dumb eyes travelled on. The loss of

The End of the Journey 15

the man had been nothing; this denuded
her universe, reducing it to the image
of the barren garden outside. It de
nuded her life too; and she had been
totally unprepared, — totally unforeseeing
of it. Shut out by the facts of her ex
istence — daughter of workers, wife of a
worker, a worker herself — from the pos
sibility of acquiring these things which
yet she had the capacity to long for,
she found herself brought face to face
in a moment with the old destitution
of her past. And she was pathetical
ly unprepared.

So was the other; she understood now
what her son had stood for in this life.
Heretofore she had seen it always as an
unequal contest between the experienced
— because the married — woman and the
inexperienced, ardent, visionary boy, the
child of a long line of dreamers; now
the obverse revealed itself, — the darling
child of fortune, with his immense in
herited advantages and luxurious gifts
of intellect, tempting the starved and
passionately appetent brain of labor. It
must have gone far to equalize the con
test. With her own pitiless inheritance
of justice she acknowledged it, and it
was a pang the more. There had not
been one victim, but two. And if the

1 6 Harper's Novelettes

boy had but paid the price of centu
ries of deficit, the woman had but as
helplessly avenged her defrauded past.
Her very inability to respond to certain
finer ranges of sensibilities — what was
it but part and condition of that en
dured fraud ?

For her forehead was good and her
eyes were hungry.

" I expect," she repeated (and perhaps
it was the merest chance that her hand,
trembling across the bookcase, touched
one lingering moment the dim crimson
Plutarch), "I ought to send them back?"

She raised two eyes full of honest,
suffering purpose, but the other turned
away from them, putting up her hands
involuntarily as if to push away the
question — the question which marked the
impassable gulf between herself and this
woman as nothing else could have done,
and yet, as nothing else could have done,
either, drew her across it with a vastness
of sudden human pity in direct propor
tion to her own fierce sense of person
al revolt.

"No — no/' she cried; "that was be
tween you /" Then added, " But I know
that he would say — keep them!"

She turned again and gazed at the
bookshelves and the Plutarch — dimmer

The End of the Journey 17

still in its crimson binding the longer
she gazed. She forgot the room, the
woman, — even for a moment her son.
She was seeing once more, down the
long reach of her dearly remembered
years, that gentle, learned, aristocratic
judge. He had been a judge of men
as well, of infinite kindliness, and tol
erant without bounds.

She did not know how long she stood
there, but she recalled herself with a
start, to find that other figure still be
side her watching dumbly. And never
in the world — that kindly judge of men
must have smiled to see — had she looked
a greater lady than as she turned to gaze
upon it kindly with an outstretched hand.

" Good-by."

The other clung to it a moment.
" Oh, I wish I had you for a friend !"
she exclaimed, adding, chokingly, " You
won't think hard of me?"

The elder woman shook her head,
loosened her hand gently, and without
another glance about her went out and
down the steps. The younger, in the
doorway, watched wistfully till the droop
ing peppers hid the last fold of the gray
gown and the gray head carried high.

Carried high, — for where had been the
use of telling her that the boy was dead ?

The Sage-brush Hen

'v

BY THOMAS A. JANVIER

SHE blew in one day on HilPs coach
from Santa Fe — Hill ran the coach
that year the end of the track was
at Palomitas, it being shorter going up
that way to Pueblo and Denver and Lead-
ville than round by the Atchisoii and
changing at El Moro to the Narrow
Gaiflgc — and, being up on the box with
Hill, she was so all over dust that Cher
ry sung out to him, " Where'd you get
your sage-brush hen from?" And the
name stuck.

More folks in Palomitas had names
that had tumbled to 'em like that than
the kind that had come regular. And
even when they sounded regular you
never could be dead sure they was. Reg
ular names used to get lost pretty often
coming across the Plains in those days—
more'n a few finding it better, about as
they got to the Missouri, to leave be
hind what they'd been called by back

The Sage-brush Hen 19

East and draw something new from the
pack. Making a change like that was
apt to be wholesomer, and often saved talk.

Hill said the Hen was more fun com
ing across from Santa Fe than a basket
ful of monkeys; and she was all the
funnier, he said, because when he picked
her up at the Fonda she looked like
as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth
and started in with her monkey-shines
so sort of quiet and demure. Along with
her, waiting at the Fonda, was an old
gent with spectacles who turned out to
be a mine-sharp — one of them fellows
the government sends out to the Ter
ritory to write up serious in books all
the fool stories prospectors and such un
load on 7em: the kind that needs to be
led, and '11 eat out of your hand. The
Hen and the old gent and Hill had the
box seat, the Hen in between; and she
was that particular about her skirts
climbing up, and about making room
after she got there, that Hill said he
sized her up himself for an officer's
wife going East.

Except to say thank you, and talk
polite that way, she didn't open her head
till they'd got clear of the town and
were going slow in that first bit of bad
road among the sand-hills; and it was

20 Harper's Novelettes

the old gent speaking to her — telling her
it was a fine day, and he hoped she liked
it — that set her stamps a-going a little
then. She allowed the weather was
about what it ought to be, and said she
was much obliged and it suited her; and
then she got her tongue in behind her
teeth again as if she meant to keep it
there — till the old gent took a fresh start
by asking her if she'd been in the Ter
ritory long. She said polite she hadn't,
and was quiet for a minute. Then she
got out her pocket-handkerchief and put
it up to her eyes and said she'd been in
it longer'n she wanted, and was glad
she was going away. Hill said her talk
ing that way made him feel kind of cu
rious himself; but he didn't have no
need to ask questions — the old gent
saving him that trouble by going for her
sort of fatherly and pumping away at
her till he got the whole thing.

It come out scrappy, like as might be
expected, Hill said; and so natural-
sounding he thought he must be asleep
and dreaming — he knowing pretty well
what was going 011 in the Territory, and
she telling about doings that was news
to him and the kind he'd been sure to
hear a lot of if they'd ever really come
off. Hill said he wished he could tell it

The Sage-brush Hen 21

all as she did — speaking low, and ketching
her breath in the worst parts, and mop
ping at her eyes with her pocket-
handkerchief—but he couldn't; and all
he could say about it was it was better'n
any theatre show he'd ever seen. The
nubs of it was, he said, that she said
her husband had taken out a troop from
Fort Wingate against the Apaches (Hill
knew blame well up there in the Navajo
country was no place to look for
Apaches) and the troop had been am
bushed in a canon in the Zuni Mountains
(which made the story still tougher) and
every man of 'em, along with her " dear
Captain," as she called him, had lost
his hair. " His loved remains are where
those fierce creatures left them," she said.
" I have not even the sad solace of prop
erly burying his precious bones!" And
she cried.

The old gent was quite broke up, Hill
said, and took a-hold of her hand father
ly — she was a powerful fine-looking wom
an — and said she had his sympathy; and
when she eased up on her crying so she
could talk she said she was much obliged
— and felt it all the more, she said, be
cause he looked like a young uncle of
hers who'd brought her up, her father
being dead, till she was married East

22 Harper's Novelettes

to her dear Captain and had come out
to the Territory with him. to his doom.

Hill said it all went so smooth ho
took it down himself at first — but he got
his wind while she was crying, and he
asked her what her Captain's name was,
and what was his regiment ; telling her he
hadn't heard of any trouble up around
Wingate, and it was news to him Apaches
was in those parts. She give him a dig
in the ribs with her elbow — as much as
to tell him he wasn't to ask no such
questions — and said back to him her
dear husband was Captain Chiswick of
the Twelfth Cavalry; and it had been a
big come-down for him, she said, when
he got his commission in the Regulars,
after he'd been a Volunteer brigadier-
general in the war.

Hill knew right enough there wasn't
no Twelfth Cavalry nowhere, and he
knew the boys at Wingate were A and
F troops of the Fourth; but he ketched
on to the way she was giving it to the
old gent — and so Tie give her a dig in
the ribs, and said he'd known Captain
Chiswick intimate, and he was as good
a fellow as ever was, and it was a blame
pity he was killed. She give him a dig
back again, at that — and was less par
ticular about making room on his side.

The Sage-brash Hen 23

The old gent took it all in, just as
it come along; and after she'd finished
up about the Apaches killing her dear
Captain he wanted to know where she
was heading for — "because if she was
going home East, he said, he was go
ing East himself and could give her a
father's care.

She said back to him, pleasant-like,
that a young man like him couldn't well
be fathering an old lady like her, though
it was obliging of him to offer ; but, any
way, she wasn't going straight back East,
because she had to wait a while at Palo-
mitas for a remittance she was expecting
to pay her way through — and she wasn't
any too sure about it, she said, whether
she'd get her remittance; or, if she did
get it, when it would come. Everything
bad always got down on you at once,
she said; and just as the cruel savages
had slain her dear Captain along come
the news the bank East he'd put his
money in had broke the worst kind. Her
financial difficulties wasn't a patch on
the trouble her sorrowing heart was giv
ing her, she said; but she allowed they
added what she called pangs of bitter
ness to her deeper pain.

The old gent — he wasn't a fool clean
through — asked her what was the mat-

24 Harper's Novelettes

ter with her government transportation;
she having a right to transportation, be
ing an officer's widow going home. Hill
said he gave her a nudge at that, as much
as to say the old gent had her. She
didn't faze a bit, though. It was her
government transportation she was wait
ing for, she cracked back to him smooth
and natural; but such things had to go
all the way to Washington to be settled,
she said, and then come West again —
Hill said he 'most snickered out at that—
and she'd known cases when red tape had
got in the way and transportation hadn't
been allowed at all. Then she sighed
terrible, and said it might be a long,
long while before she could get home
again to her little boy— who was all there
was left her in the world. Her little
Willy was being took care of by his
grandmother, she said, and he was just
his father's own handsome self over again
— and she got out her pocket-handker
chief and jammed it up to her eyes.

Her left hand was lying in her lap,
sort of casual, and the old gent got a-hold
of it and said he didn't know how to tell
her how sorry he was for her. Talking
from behind her pocket-handkerchief, she
said such sympathy was precious; and
then she went on, kind of pitiful, saying

The Sage-brush Hen 25

she s'posed her little Willy'd have forgot
all about her before she'd get back to him
— and she cried some more. Hill said
she did it so well he was half took
in himself for a minute, and felt so
bad he went to licking and swearing at
his mules.

After a while she took a brace — get
ting down her pocket-handkerchief, and
calling in the hand the old gent was
a-holding — and said she must be brave,
like her dear Captain 'd always been, so
he'd see when he was a-looking at her
from heaven she was doing the square
thing. And as to having to wait around
before she went East, she said, in one
way it didn't make any matter — seeing
she'd be well cared for and comfortable
at Palomitas staying in the house of the
Baptist minister, who'd married her aunt.

Hill said when she went to talking
about Baptist ministers and aunts in
Palomitas he shook so laughing inside
he 'most fell off the box. Except the
Mexican padre who belonged there — the
one that made a record, and Bishop
Lamy had to bounce — and sometimes the
French one from San Juan, who was a
good fellow and hadn't a fly on him
anywhere, there wasn't a fire-escape ever
showed himself in Palomitas; and as

3

26 Harper's Novelettes

to the ladies of the town — well, the ladles
wasn't just what you'd call the aunt
kind. It's a cold fact that that year
when the end of the track stuck there
Palomitas was about the cussedest town
there was in the whole Territory — and
so it was no more'n natural Hill should
pretty near bust himself trying to hold
in his laughing when the Hen took
to talking so offhand about Palomitas
and Baptist ministers and aunts. She
felt how he was shaking, and jammed
him hard with her elbow to keep him
from letting his laugh out and giving
her away.

Hill said they'd got along to Pojuaque
by the time the Hen had finished telling
about herself, and the fix she was in
because she had to wait along with her
aunt in Palomitas till her transporta
tion come from Washington — and she
just sick to get East and grab her little
Willy in her arms. And the old gent
was that interested in it all, Hill said,
it was a sight to see how he went on.

At Pojuaque the coach always made
a noon stop, and the team was changed
and the passengers eat lunch at old man
Bouquet's. lie was a Frenchman, old
man Bouquet was; but he'd been in the
Territory from 'way back, and he'd got

The Sage-brush Hen 27

a nice garden round his house and fixed
things up French style. His strongest
hold was his wine-making. He made a
first-class drink, as drinks of that sort
go ; and, for its kind, it was pre.tty strong.
As his cooking was first class too, Hill's
passengers — and the other folks that
stopped for grub there — always wanted
to make a good long halt.

The old gent, Hill said, knew how to
talk French, and that made old man
Bouquet extra obliging— and he set up
a rattling good lunch and fetched out
some of the wine he said he was in the
habit of keeping for himself, seeing he'd
got somebody in the house for once who
really knew the difference between good
and bad. He fixed up a table out in the
garden — where he'd a queer tree, all
growed together, he thought a heap of—
and set down with 'em himself; and Hill
said it was one of the pleasantest lunches
he'd eat in all his life.

The Hen and the old gent got friend
lier and friendlier — she being more cheer
ful when she'd been lunching a while,
and getting to talking so comical she
kept 'em all on a full laugh. Now and
then, though, she'd pull up sudden and
kind of back away — making out she did
n't want it to show so much — and get

28 Harper's Novelettes

her pocket-handkerchief to her eyes and
snuffle; and then she'd pull herself to
gether sort of conspicuous, and say she
didn't want to spoil the party, but she
couldn't help thinking how long it was
likely to be before she'd see her little
hoy. And then the old gent would say
that such tender motherliness did her
credit, and hers was a sweet nature, and
he'd hold her hand till she took it away.

Hill said the time passed so pleasant
he forgot how it was going, and when he
happened to think to look at his watch
he found he'd have to everlastingly hustle
his mules to get over to Palomitas in
time to ketch the Denver train. He went
off in a tearing hurry to hitch up, and
old man Bouquet went along to help
him — the old gent saying he guessed he
and Mrs. Chiswick would stay setting
where they was, it being cool and com
fortable in the garden, till the team was
put to. They set so solid, Hill said, they
didn't hear him when he sung out to 'em
he was ready; and he said he let his
mouth go wide open and yelled like h — 11.
(Hill always talked that careless way.
He didn't mean no harm by it. He said
it was just a habit he'd got into driving
mules.) They not coming, he went to
hurry 'em, he said— and as he come up

The Sage-brtfsh Hen 29

behind 'em the Hen was stuffing some
thing into her frock, and the old gent
was saying : " I want you to get quickly
to your dear infant, my daughter. You
can return at your convenience my
trifling loan. And now I will give you
a fatherly kiss — "

But he didn't, Hill said — because the
Hen heard Hill's boots on the gravel and
faced round so quick she spoiled his
chance. He seemed a little jolted, Hill
said ; but the Hen was so cool, and talked
so pleasant and natural about the good
lunch they'd been having, and what a
fine afternoon it was, he braced up and
got to talking easy too.

Then they all broke for the coach, and
got away across the Tesuque River and
on through the sand-hills — with Hill cut
ting away at his mules and using words
to 7em fit to blister their hides, and when
they fetched the Canada they were about
up again to schedule time. After the
Mexican who kept the Santa Cruz post-
office had made the mess he always did
with the mail matter, and had got the
cussing he always got from Hill, they
started off again — coming slow through
that bit of extra-heavy road along by the
Rio Grande, but getting to the deepo at
Palomitas to ketch the Denver train.

30 Harper's Novelettes

All the way over from Pojuaque, Hill
said, lie could see out of the corner of
his eye the old gent was nudging up to
the Hen with his shoulder, friendly and
sociable; and he said he noticed the Hen
was a good deal less particular about
making room. The old gent flushed up
and got into a regular temper, Hill said,
when Cherry sung out as they pulled
into the deepo platform, " Where'd you
get your sage-brush hen from?" — and
that way give her what stuck fast for
her name.

As it turned out, they might have kept
on lunching as long as they'd a mind to
at Pojuaque; and Hill might have let
his mules take it easy, without tiring
himself swearing at 'em, on a dead walk
— there being a washout in the Comanche
Canon, up above the Embudo, that held
the train. It wasn't much of a washout,
the conductor said; but he said he guess
ed all hands would be more comfortable
waiting at Palomitas, where there were
things doing, than they would be setting
still in the canon while the track gang
finished their job — and he said he reck
oned the train wouldn't start for about
three hours.

The Hen and the old gent was standing
on the deepo platform, where they'd land-

The Sage-brush Hen 31

ed from the coach; and Hill said as he
was taking his mails across to the express-
car he heard him asking her once more
if she hadn't better come right along
East to her lonely babe; and promising
to take a father's care of her all the way.
The Hen seemed to be in two minds
about it for a minute, Hill said ; and then
she thanked him, sweet as sugar, for his
goodness to her in her time of trouble;
and told him it would be a real comfort
to go East with such a kind escort to
take care of her — but she said it wouldn't
work, because she was expected in Palo-
mitas, and not stopping there would be
disappointing to her dear uncle and aunt.

Tt was after sundown, and getting
duskish, while they were talking; and she
said she must be getting along. The old
gent said he'd like to go with her; but
she said he mustn't think of it, as it was
only a step to the parsonage and she
knew the way. While he was keeping 011
telling her she really must let him see
her safe with her relatives, up come Santa
Fe Charley — and Charley sung out:
"Hello, old girl, — so you've got here! I
was looking for you on the coach, and I
thought you hadn't come."

Hill said he began to shake with laugh
ing, as he was sure it would be a dead

32 Harper's Novelettes

give-away for her — Santa Fe being the
dealer at the Forest Queen, and about
the toughest tough there was in town.
Charley didn't look tough, though. He
always dressed toney, all in black, with
a long frock coat and a black felt hat
— so he looked like he'd just come off
Fifth Avenue — and a white tie. It helped
him in his business, sometimes, dressing
that way.

Hill said the Hen give a little jump
when he sung out to her, but she didn't
turn a hair. " Dear Uncle Charley, I am
so glad to see you!" she said — and went
right on, speaking to the old gent : " This
is my uncle, the Baptist minister, sir,
come to take me to the parsonage to my
dear aunt. It's almost funny to have
so young an uncle. Aunt's young too —
you see, grandfather married a second
time. We're more like sister and brother
— being so near of an age; and he always
will talk to me free and easy, like he
always did — though I tell him now he's
a minister it don't sound well." And then
she whipped round to Charley, so quick
he hadn't time to get a word in edge
wise, and said to him: "I hope Aunt
Jane's well, and didn't have to go up to
Denver — as she said she might in her
last letter — to look after Cousin Mary.

The Sage-brash Hen 33

And I do hope you've finished the paint
ing she said was going on at the parson
age — so you can take me in there till my
transportation comes and I can start
East. This kind gentleman, who's going
up on to-night's train, has been offering —
and it's just as good of him, even if I
can't go — to escort me home to my dear
baby; and he's been just full of sympa
thy over my dear husband Captain Chis-
wick's loss."

Hill said he never knew anybody take
cards as quick as Santa Fe took the cards
the Hen was giving him. " I'm very
happy to meet you, sir," he said to the
old gent ; " and most grateful to you for
your kindness to my poor niece Rachel
in her distress. We have been sorrowing
over her during Captain Chiswick's long
and painful illness — "

" My dear Captain had been sick for
three months, and got out of his bed to
go and be killed with his men by those
dreadful Apaches," the Hen cut in.

" — and when the news came of the
massacre," Charley went right on, as cool
as an iced drink, " our hearts almost
broke for her. Captain Chiswick was a
splendid gentleman, sir; one of the finest
officers ever sent out to this Territory.
His loss is a bad thing for the Service;

34 Harper's Novelettes

but it is a worse thing for my poor niece
—left forsaken with her sweet babes.
They are noble children, sir; worthy of
their noble sire!"

"Oh, Uncle Charley!" said the Hen.
" Didn't you get my letter telling you my
little Jane died of croup? I've only
my little Willy, now!" And she kind
of gagged.

" My poor child ! My poor child !" said
Santa Fe. " I did not know that death
had winged a double dart at you like
that — your letter never came." And then
he said to the old gent : " The mail service
in this Territory, sir, is just about as bad
as it can be. The government ought to
be ashamed!"

Hill said while they was giving it
and taking it that way he 'most choked
— particular as the old gent took it all
down whole.

Hill said the three of 'em was sort of
quiet and sorrowful for a minute, and
then Santa Fe said: "It is too bad,
Rachel, but your aunt Jane did have to
go up to Denver yesterday — a despatch
came saying Cousin Mary's taken worse.
And the parsonage is in such a mess still
with the painters that I've moved over
to the Forest Queen Hotel. But you can
come there too — it's kept by an officer's

The Sage-brush Hen 3$

widow, you know, and is most quiet and
respectable — and you'll be 'most as com
fortable waiting there till your trans
portation comes along as you would be
if I could take you home."

Hill said hearing the Forest Queen
talked about as quiet and respectable, and
old Tenderfoot Sal, who kept it, called
an officer's widow, so set him to shaking
he had to get to where there was a keg
of railroad spikes and set down on it
and hold his sides with both hands.

Santa Fe turned to the old gent, Hill
said— talking as polite as a Pullman con
ductor — and told him since he'd been so
kind to his unhappy niece he hoped he'd
come along with 'em to the hotel too —
where he'd be more comfortable, Santa
Fe said, getting something to eat and
drink than he would be kicking around
the deepo waiting till they'd filled in the
washout and the train could start.

Hill said the Hen gave Santa Fe n
queer sort of look at that, as much as
to ask him if he was dead sure he had
the cards for that lead. Santa Fe gave
her a look back again, as much as to say
he knew what was and what wasn't on
the table; and then he went on to the
old gent, speaking pleasant, telling him
likely it might be a little bit noisy over

36 Harper's Novelettes

at the hotel — doing her best, he said,
Mrs. Major Kogers couldn't help having
noise sometimes, things being so rough
and tumble out there on the frontier;
but he had a private room for his study,
where he wrote his sermons, he said, and
got into it by a side door — and so he
guessed things wouldn't be too bad.

That seemed to make the Hen easy,
Hill said ; and away the three of 'em went
together to the Forest Queen. Hill knew
it was straight enough about the private
room and the side door — Santa Fe had
it to do business in for himself, on the
quiet, when he didn't have to deal; and
Hill 'd known of a good many folks who'd
gone in that private room by that side
door and hadn't come out again till Santa
Fe'd scooped their pile. But it wasn't
no business of his, he said; and he said
he was glad to get shut of 'em so he might
get the chance to let out the laughing
that fairly was hurting his insides.

As they were going away from the
deepo, Hill said, he heard Santa Fe tell
ing the old gent he was sorry it was get
ting so dark — as he'd like to take him
round go he could see the parsonage, and
the new church they'd just finished build
ing and was going to put an organ in
as soon as they'd raised more funds; but

The Sage-brush Hen 37

it wasn't worth while going out of their
way, he said, because they wouldn't show
to no sort advantage with the light so
bad. As the only church in Palomitas
was the Mexican mud one about two
hundred years old, and as the nearest
thing to a parsonage was the padre's
house that Denver Jones had rented and
had his faro-bank in, Hill said he guessed
Charley acted sensible in not trying to
show the old gent around that part of
the town.

Hill said after he'd got his supper ho
thought he'd come down to the deepo and
sort of wait around there; on the chance
he'd ketch on — when the old gent come
over to the train — to what Santa Fe and
the Hen 'd been putting upon him. Suro
enough, he did.

Along about ten o'clock a starting order
come down to the agent — the track gang
by that time having the washout so near
fixed it would be fit by the time the train
got there to go across — and the agent
sent word over to the Forest Queen to
the old gent, who was the only Pullman
passenger, he'd better be coming along.

In five minutes or so he showed up.
He wasn't in the best shape, Hill said,
and Santa Fe and the Hen each of 'em
was giving him an arm; though what he

3 8 Harper's Novelettes

seemed to need morc'n arms, Hill said,
was legs — the ones he had not being in
first-class order and working bad. But he
didn't make no exhibition of himself,
and talked right enough — only that ho
spoke sort of short and scrappy — and the
three of 'em was as friendly together as
friendly could be. Hill said he didn't
think it was any hurt to listen, things
being the way they were, and he edged
up close to 'em — while they stood waiting
for the porter to light up the Pullman—
and though he couldn't quite make sense
of all they was saying he did get on to
enough of it to size up pretty close how
they'd put the old gent through.

"Although it is for my struggling
church, a weak blade of grass in the
desert," Santa Fe was saying when Hill
got the range of 'em, " I cannot but re
gret having taken from you your splen
did contribution to our parish fund in
so unusual, I might almost say in so un
seemly a way. That I have returned to
you a sufficient sum to enable you to
prosecute your journey to its conclusion
places you under no obligation to me.
Indeed, I could not have done less —
considering the very liberal loan that you
have made to my poor niece to enable
her to return quickly to her helpless babe*

The Sage-brush Hen 39

As I hardly need tell you, that loan will
be returned promptly — as soon as Mrs.
Captain Chiswick gets East and is able
to disentangle her affairs."

"Indeed it will," the Hen put in.
" My generous benefactor shall be squared
with if I have to sell my clothes !"

" Mustn't think of such a thing. Catch
cold," the old gent said. " Pleasure's all
mine to assist such a noble woman in
her unmerited distress. And now I shall
have happiness, and same time sorrow,
to give her fatherly kiss for farewell."

The Hen edged away a little, Hill said,
and Santa Fe shortened his grip a little
on the old gent's arm — so his fatherly
kissing missed fire. But he didn't seem
to notice, and said to Santa Fe : " Never
knew a minister know cards like you.
Wonderful! And wonderful luck what
you held. Played cards a good deal my
self. Never could play like you !"

Santa Fe steadied the old gent, Hill
said, and said to him in a kind of ex
plaining way: "As I told you, my dear
sir, in my wild college days— before I
got light on my sinful path and headed
for the ministry — I was reckoned some
thing out of the common as a card-
player, and what tho profane call luck
used to be with me all the time. Of

40 Harper's Novelettes

course, since I humbly — but, I trust, help
fully — took to being a worker in the vine
yard, I have not touched those devil's
picture-books; nor should I have touched
them to-night but for my hope that a
little game would help to while away
your time of tedious waiting. As for
playing for money, that would have been
quite impossible if it had not been for
my niece's suggestion that my winnings
— in case such came to me — should be
added to our meagre parish fund. I
trust that I have not done wrong in
yielding to my impulse. At least I have
to sustain me the knowledge that if you,
my dear sir, are somewhat the worse,
my impoverished church is much the
better for our friendly game of chance."

Hill said hearing Santa Fe Charley
talking about chance in any game where
he had the dealing was so funny it was
better'n going to the circus. But the old
gent took it right enough — and the Hen
added on: "Yes, Uncle Charley can get
the organ he's been wanting so badly for
his church, now. And I'm sure we'll all
think of how we owe its sweet music to
you every time we hear it played !" — and
she edged up to him again, so he could
hold her hand. " It must make you very,
very happy, sir," she kept on, speaking

The Sage-brash Hen 41

kind of low and gentle, but not coming
as close as he wanted her, " to go about
the world doing such generous-hearted
good deeds! I'm sure I'd like to thank
you enough — only there isn't any fit words
to thank you in — for your noble-hearted
generous goodness to me!"

The old gent hauled away on her hand,
Hill said, trying to get her closer, and
said back to her : " Words quite unneces
sary. Old man's heart filled with pleas
ure obliging such dear child. Never mind
about words. Accept old man's fatherly
kiss, like daughter, for good-by."

But he missed it that time too, Hill
said — and Hill said, speaking in his care
less cuss-word way, it was pretty d — n
rough on him what poor luck in fatherly
kisses he seemed to have — because just
then the train-conductor swung his lan
tern and sung out, " All aboard !"

That ended things. Before the old
gent knew what had got him, Santa Pe
and the Hen had boosted him up the steps
on to the platform of the Pullman —
where the Pullman conductor got a grip
on him just in time to save him from
spilling — and then the train pulled out:
with the Pullman conductor keeping him
steady, and he throwing back good-by
kisses to the Hen with both hands.

42 Harper's Novelettes

Hill said the Hen and Santa Fe kept
quiet till the hind lights showed beyond
the end of the deepo platform: and then
the Hen grabbed Santa Fe round the
neck and just hung on to him — so full
of laugh she was limp — while they both
roared. And Hill said he roared too. It
was the most comical bit of business, he
said, he'd tumbled to in all his bom days !

It wasn't until the train got clear
round the curve above the station, Hill
said, that Charley and the Hen could
pull 'emselves together so they could talk.
Then the Hen let a-go of Santa Fe's
neck and said comical — speaking kind of
precise and toncy, like as if she was an
officer's wife sure enough : " You'd better
return to your study, dear Uncle Charles,
and finish writing that sermon you said
we'd interrupt you in about caring for
the sheep as well as the lambs !"

And then they went off together yell
ing, Hill said, over to the Forest Queen.

A Madonna of the Desert

BY ELIA W. PEATTIE

THE "Dancers" trip it for twenty
miles along the Mojave Desert-
grotesque forms in red lava rock,
fixed in a horrible static saraband. The
trail to Camp Crowe leads through this
mocking company and takes its name
from them, though for the last twenty-
five miles it emerges from the "Ball
Koom" and climbs a dun mesa which
terminates in a fortresslike outcropping
of quartz, which is at once the lure
and the shelter of the men who live at
its base.

On a certain March day in 1899 the
overland stopped at San Miguel — an al
most unprecedented event — and let off
two passengers. The man was lifted
down carefully by the train crew. The
woman, forgetful of self, neglected the
casual hand of the porter, offered for
her assistance.

"Well, ma'am," said the conductor,

44 Harper's Novelettes

"there's the wagon to meet yon. I
swear, that takes a burden off my mind.
Now you're all right, ma'am; though I
do hate to leave you here among them
blamed Dancers. Here's the man to meet
you, ma'am. And I'm thankful you got
through without any— any accident."

He gave a swift clasp to the woman's
hand and swung on the slow-moving
train. Her companion sat on the embank
ment, leaning against her, as she waved
a farewell to the men who had helped her
through her long and cruel journey, and
then turned to greet the driver of the
wagon her husband's cousin had sent
from Camp Crowe. The supply-wagon
was visible a little way off, hitched to
four " clay - bank " mules — creatures
which suited their environment in every
respect, and at a comparatively short
distance melted completely into the
monochrome of the desert. The driver
of the wagon had a stretcher with him,
as if quite prepared for the helplessness
of his passenger. He and the woman
carried the sick man to the wagon, the
man on the stretcher saving his strength
in every way. He did not so much as
trouble himself to look around, but had
the air of one who guards a very precious
thing and cannot afford to have his at-

A Madonna of the Desert 45

tention diverted. He did, indeed, guard
the one thing that money, science, and
faith cannot supply — the light of life,
which flickered low in its socket and
which a breath would extinguish.

The woman had a voice hoth cheerful
and clear, and as she staggered along
over the rough embankment, carrying
her end of the stretcher, she said :

" It's such a relief to find you here
waiting! When I was told that the
train never stopped here at San Miguel's
unless it was signalled I realized what
a deserted place it must be, and I won
dered what we would do if you didn't
happen to be here on time."

" The hull camp was worryin* fur fear
I wouldn't git here," admitted the man.
"An' Hank Crowe wanted to send an
other man with me, but I knew he could
n't well spare one. I said to him I
calkilated a woman that would come out
to this place, an' leave her baby an' all,
would git up spunk enough to help me
with the stretcher."

His kind glance met hers and seemed
to applaud her as they stumbled over the
uneven ground with their light load.

"But is there no man at all at San
Miguel's?" she asked.

"None to speak of," said the other.

46 Harper's Novelettes

They had reached the wagon with its
covering of white canvas, and Sandy
Rich slipped the stretcher adroitly in
its place. He went back for the trunks
and hampers which had been thrown off,
while the woman gave her attention to
the invalid.

"Air you goin' to set inside?" he
asked, " or will you git up on the driver's
seat with me? I put in a foldm'-chair
so's you could stay inside if you wanted."

Claudia Judic looked questioningly at
her husband.

"I'm feeling very well," he whispered,
still with the air of guarding that un
speakably precious thing. " Sit outside,
Claudia."

" You see," said Rich, under his breath,
as they walked around to the front of
the wagon together, " there is another
man here. He's the agent of the sta
tion yon, and he does the telegraphing.
But it wouldn't do for Mr. Judic to see
him ! He's a scarecrow — come out here
six months ago much in the same way
Mr. Judic is now. He's doing fine, but
it wouldn't have done to have him carry-
in' that stretcher. It would 'a' scared
Mr. Judic outright at the start. I went
to him and said, ' Hull, don't you so much
as stick your head out of the door.' "

A Madonna of the Desert 47

" Poor fellow !" said the woman.

"Who? Hull? Oh, he's all right.
Hull ain't the sort that frets about a
missin' lung or two. There he is now!"

Claudia looked over where the dark-
red station-house squatted in a patch
of green, which lay like an emerald in
the dull gold of the desert. A slender
young man stood at the side waving
a handkerchief.

"Does he want something?" she asked.

" Hull? No. That's his way of sayin'
'good luck.'"

"Oh!" said Claudia Judic. She
snatched her own handkerchief from her
belt and fluttered the white signal. The
desert, which a moment before had seem
ed limitless and alien, already showed
signs of neighborliness.

They had been talking almost in whis
pers, but now she spoke aloud.

" I've just given him his milk and his
stimulants," she said, looking back in the
wagon from the seat to which she had
with some difficulty attained, and speak
ing as women do in hours of wifely anx
iety, as if there were but one being in
the world entitled to the masculine pro
noun. "For half an hour, at least, I
think he will be safe. It takes us a very-
long time to reach the Camp, I suppose ?"

48 Harper's Novelettes

Rich said nothing for a second or
two. lie gathered the reins in his hands
and chirruped low to his animals. Six
teen stanch legs stretched forth in uni
son, and with a curious, soft, steady
movement the wagon began to whirl along
the desert. Claudia Judic thought she
had never experienced a more delight
ful motion.

"They're as smooth as silk, them
mules," said Rich, referring to the loco
motive qualities of the excellent beasts
and not to their mottled skins of cream
and tan. " And though it is a good way
to Camp, we'll git there as safe an' as
quick as the critters ken git us."

"Well," said Claudia, in a tone of
resignation, "it seems as if things were
going to come out right. I can't help
feeling it. And, anyway, I've done all
I could."

"Yes'm," said Rich, with conviction,
" I'll bet you have."

From time to time he stole a glance
at the woman by his side. She was a
small creature with a delicate face,
sweetly featured and tinted. Her eyes
were a soft brown ; the brows above them
were rather highly arched, and the lashes
long. Her ears were pink and small;
her brown hair, touched with gold, curled

A Madonna of the Desert 49

about her ears and waved on her brow
in filmy bannerets. She sat soldier-
straight, but she was full of impulsive
and graceful motions, and when she
turned — as she did every moment or two
— to look at the prone figure within the
wagon, there was something so protecting
and efficient in her look and gesture that
Rich felt if " anything happened " she
would meet it with courage. He had
been warned that something might hap
pen. At the Camp they were under the
impression that he had gone out to meet
a dying man. James Judic was the cousin
of Henry Crowe, owner and promoter of
Crowe's Mine, and of the cyanide plant
which made marketable its economical
product, and Crowe had offered the sick
man his last chance for life in extending
to him the hospitality of the desert.

Every half -hour the mules were reined
in while the sick man was given food
and stimulants. He seldom spoke, and
his eyes had that lonely and forbidding
look which comes to those who stand at
the beginning of the Long Trail. His
wife spoke to him as if he were a child.
She used a tone of command, for all her
tenderness. She was the directress of his
destiny, and unconsciously she suited
voice and action to the part.

50 Harper's Novelettes

Claudia was almost childishly amused
at the " dancers," and when she came
to two that stood apparently with lifted
skirts, toes pointed high and arms poised,
above the head, she laughed outright.

" I believe it does me good to laugh,'7
she said, piteously, clasping and un
clasping her hands. " I never would
have dared to do it if the place weren't
so large. There's no use in keeping shut
up in your trouble in such a big place
as this !"

She took in the vast wild, the arching
heavens, the flight of a proud eagle, with
her sad and gentle eyes.

" No use on yearth !" agreed Mr. Rich.
"I say nothin' was ever any better for
pullin' a long face over it. We may as
well whoop it up while we're on this
yearth below." He said it with a twang
that seemed to give it a Scriptural turn.

The wind blowing over the desert was
cool and refreshing. The gray-green
flora of the waste mitigated the expanse
of sand, and here and there a few pifions
cluttered, or a patch of alfileria grew.
The distance was lilac, the sky a cloud
less sapphire.

•'It doesn't look so terrible," said
Claudia Judic. "I had always thought
the desert would be very terrible."

A Madonna of the Desert 51

«It gits riled," said Rich. "But I
never saw none so ugly they was riled
all the time."

Mrs. Judic laughed lightly.

"That's true enough," she said, and
settled her feet on the dashboard. She
was ready, evidently, to accept both the
comforts and the philosophy of the place.
She had left behind her the freshly
weaned babe of her love and all the
friends of her native town; left behind
the snug home-life, the ease which had
always been hers, She had set out to
race and to struggle with Death, and she
was nerved to the contest. She had no
thought and no hope that did not relate
to it.

"It's a pity," said Rich, as they ate
together from the lunch-basket he had
spread between them on the high seat,
" that you couldn't 'a' brought your baby.
Hank Crowe was tellin' me how you had
to leave it behind. I said to him I
thought that was mighty tough."

" Oh," said Mrs. Judic, with a catch
In her throat, " I couldn't bring him.
He was just six months old the very day
the doctor told me that if I wanted to
keep Mr. Judic alive I'd have to take
him to another climate. You see, Mr.
Judic couldn't go alone. He depends on

52 Harper's Novelettes

me so. About one-tenth of him is body
and all the rest is spirit, you may say.
The doctor — old Doctor Reynolds that
we've always had — said if I sent him off
alone he was as good as doomed. I had
to hold James in my arms a good part
of the way here. His vitality was so
low I was afraid he might — might go,
and I not know it. You see, I simply
couldn't bring the baby."

She looked at the man with an ex
pression at once wistful and defensive.

"Oh pshaw, no!" he cried. "What
could you 'a' done with a baby ?"

"I just gave him over to Mother
Judic," said she. "Mother has such a
nice little home, with a beautiful yard
and all. And all the neighbors are in
terested in Jamie. He's a very healthy
baby, and he's quick to make friends —
holds out his hands to every one and is
forever laughing. His hair is the bright
est yellow I ever saw. You'd think it
was spun gold if you were to see it in the
sun, and there's a dimple at every finger
and one at each knee and elbow, — besides,
of course, those in his cheeks."

"Must be as full of holes as a sieve,"
laughed Kich, rather huskily.

"You never had a baby, I suppose,
Kr.Rich?"

A Madonna of the Desert 53

"Who? Me? Oh, thunder! yes, I've
had a kid. Dead, though. Mother dead
too. His mother was part Mojave — part
Indian, you know. But she was a good
woman. And the kid — he was all right
too. We had a smallpox summer here
once and — "

"I see/' said Claudia Judic, softly.
" And your boy — how old was he ?"

"Why, he was three. He was mighty
cute, too, — used to pretend help me hitch
up, and 'd ride with me everywhere. I
was doin' haulin' for the old Bona-
venture mine then. I just quit and come
away after he was gone. It was too all-
fired lonesome; I couldn't stand it."

"No," said the woman, softly. They
drove on for some time in silence, each
absorbed in his own thoughts. The breaith-
ing of the sick man came to them heavily.

"It's a long way yet, I suppose," said
Mrs. Judic.

" Oh, not so far," heartened the other,
and whipped his mules into a faster run.
The woman's small hands were clasped
in her lap, and Eich could see that her
whole being was at a tension. She was
listening, body and soul, to that labored
breathing. She had asked her husband
a dozen times if he wanted her to hold
his head or sit by him, but he had more

54 Harper's Novelettes

air, he said, if he had the whole space
to himself. There was air enough, sure
ly — air sweeping out of the lilac distance,
quivering visibly on the horizon, tossing
the finer sand in soft hillocks. From
time to time Mrs. Judic gave her hus
band whiskey and water from a flask, but
betweentimes she used all of her self-
control to feign indifference. It annoyed
him, she feared, to be the constant sub
ject of attentions.

At twilight they reached the Camp.
It was a group of tents set in the sand.
A cold and beautiful spring bubbled up
out of the ground and trickled away in
a small rivulet. In the shadow of the
Fortress, as the rock was called, stood
the cyanide plant, with its fresh pine
sides — an ungainly edifice.

There was a new tent set apart among
a group of piiions, with its door opening
to the expanse of the desert. Eich
pointed it out.

" That's your home, ma'am," he said.
" No front steps to scrub, you see." lie
did not drive up to the tent, but kept
on the road and stopped before a hitch-
ing-post.

"I ain't goin' to cut your yard all
up," he explained.

Their approach had been silent, and

A Madonna of the Desert 55

the men, who were at supper in the
eating-tent, had not heard their arrival.

" The dogs usually let folk know when
there's anything doin'," said Rich, "but
this time we've fooled them."

In the dim interior of the wagon they
could make out the sick man lying mo
tionless. His eyes were closed, his breath
feeble, his hands shut in a curious grip.

Eich started back from the wagon, but
Mrs. Judic gave a reassuring whisper.

"He's just holding on to himself,"
she said. "Let them know he's here,
and tell them to bring something hot
— coffee or soup.?;

A moment later the men came pouring
out of the eating-tent. They were silent,
having evidently been warned against a.
commotion. At their head walked Henry
Crowe, Judic's cousin. He strode up to
Claudia, looking gigantic in the twi
light, and grasped her hand in awk
ward congratulation.

^"Wcll, you got here!" lie said, sig
nificantly.

He had made the Judics' tent com
fortable in soldier fashion, with two cots
covered with gray blankets, a table, somo
folding-stools, a stove, and a wash-stand.
He and Rich carried in the sick man.
The Chinese cook came running along in.

5 6 Harper's Novelettes

the windy dusk bearing a tray of hot
food, and Claudia threw off her hat to
make ready to feed her husband. At
the end of an hour he was sleeping com
fortably. Then she stood up and wiped
the perspiration from her face.

" Come," Crowe whispered. " Come
over and get something to eat. One of
the men will look after James."

She obeyed without a word, and Crowe
sent one of the men to keep watch till
her return.

" Well," said Henry Crowe, suiting his
pace to hers as they crossed the camp-
yard, "I like your way of doing things,
Claudia. If James lives, I guess he'll
know where to put the blame. I always
knew you had sentiment, but I wasn't
so sure you had sense. I thought perhaps
you were too sweet to have any sense."

His cousin's wife looked up wanly.

"Oh, Henry," she laughed, "how
queer it sounds to have any one talking
about me! I've almost forgotten that
I existed. It's been so horrible about
James, and it was such torture for his
mother to part with him, and every one
has been so wondering how the baby
would get on and if it would live, that
I've ceased to have any life except
through these others."

A Madonna of the Desert 57

Crowe seated her at the table and
waited on her, even cutting the bread
from the loaf.

" That's all right, too/7 he said, heart
ily. "You've been living, Claudia!
Some of us couldn't care that much about
any one if we wanted to, and if we did
care we'd never know how to think of
anybody but ourselves."

As Claudia Judic ate the coarse food
of the camp, washing the meal down with
the hot, grateful tea, she thought of her
cousin's words. Perhaps this labor, this
consuming anxiety, this utter sub
mergence of self, was life. Maybe it
was a privilege — this responsibility, this
midnight flow of tears, this relinquish-
ment of delight! She fell to thinking
of her wedding romance, of the days of
joy and service and of pleasant neigh
borly offices and domestic tasks, of her
first home-keeping and all the pleasures
of that placid, useful, wholesome time.
Then came the revelation of Jamie, the
child of her heart, and, suddenly, as his
father and herself worked and loved and
planned together, brooding over the child,
building for it, and nurtured with the
sweet food of content, James had been
stricken down. Had he been a heartier
man, the physician said, he would have

5 8 Harper's Novelettes

died. As it was, he hung somewhere
between life and death, and fared forth
neither way. Then came the period of
horrible waiting, while the soul and the
mind of the sick man grew torpid, while
all planning and initiative devolved upon
her, so unexperienced and untrained, and
their small store dwindled, and the dread
of want overtook them.

She looked up suddenly, remembering
where she was. Not far from her, in a
corner, her cousin sat smoking his pipe.
Six feet and two inches in height, with
his sand-colored khaki, yellow leggings,
and his sun-bleached hair, he was typical
of the West of which Claudia had
dreamed — dreaming not so much with
anticipation as with dread.

"You'll sleep well to-night," said her
cousin, "and in the morning we'll talk
things over. I don't say James's pros
pects are bright, but I say he has a
fighting chance ! As for you —

Claudia Judic held up a fragile hand
on which glittered her diamond engage
ment-ring, and the plain gold band that
James Judic had placed on that slender
finger on a yet more significant occasion.

"Don't speak of me!" she cried, with
a kind of gayety. " I — I think I'd rather
talk of anything else."

A Madonna of the Desert 59

They went out-of-doors together and
paced up and down the sands, talking
of their friends and neighbors back in
Craven, Iowa. Crowe wanted to say
something about the baby, but she
avoided that subject, and turned him
from it whenever he approached it. So,
after a time, he left her at her tent. He
paced up and down at a distance for a
while, watching her as she made prepara
tions to care for the sick man during the
night. She had not asked to have any
one near her, had expressed no fear of the
black waste without her door, had not even
so much as inquired if there were wild
animals or prowling Indians. There were
both, in fact, but the men at Camp Crowe
took their chances even as men in the
city take theirs, with the expectation
that disaster will come to other men, but
not to themselves. After a while she
let down the flap of her tent. She was
ready for the night — the night which
would bring her little refreshment and
many interruptions.

And when, the next morning, she came
early from her tent, hollow-eyed, but smi
ling, and went to breakfast with the rest,
she was accepted as part and parcel of
Camp Crowe. The men accepted her,
liked her pluck, her reserve, the coura-

60 Harper's Novelettes

geous cheerfulness of her voice. The des
ert accepted her, and tanned her delicate
skin and took the brilliant gloss from
her hair, nourished her limbs and
strengthened her spirit. The day and
night accepted her and gave her work
and rest. She worked more hours than
any man in the Camp, but she had a pow
er of recuperation that none of the rest
had. While they plodded along the sand,
she tripped; when they gloomed, she
laughed. It was not a laugh which
sprang from gayety, for there was noth
ing to inspire that. It was the maternal
laugh — the laugh the brave spirit makes
to hearten those about it. And from the
first she assumed maternal responsibilities
in the Camp. She began by looking
after her husband's cousin, but present
ly she was looking after every one — even
Li Chung, the Chinese cook.

For the first two months her husband's
destiny hung in doubt. It was a gam
bling crowd at Crowe's Camp, but no one
was taking chances on James Judic's life.
Then, almost in a day it seemed, he began
to walk up and down outside his tent
in the morning sun, and to wonder what
the mail would bring, and to laugh at
the songs the men sang. After this his
improvement was rapid, and presently

A Madonna of the Desert 61

he was given small tasks to do about the
camp, and Henry Crowe consulted him
on business. He had a head for busi
ness, and his practical training in a
bank made it easy for him to assume
the responsibilities of the bookkeeping
and the correspondence for the Crowe
Mining Company.

At the end of six months he began to
feel himself established there, in a way.
He was still far from strong, and it was
impossible for him to make even moderate
excursions. But he was comfortable; he
slept and ate well, and his spirits were
good. He began to develop a taste for
the life, and left Claudia much alone
while he sat with the men, listening to
their stories or their songs, or taking a
hand with them at poker.

Something curious had befallen James
Judic in that strange twilight of exist
ence when he hung between life and
death. His soul had somehow divested
itself of conscientiousness, and he had
shuffled off responsibility. He fell into
the way of living for the hour, of avoid
ing thought of the future, and it was
evident that he regarded the past as a
time of heavy burdens. He seldom re
ferred to it, seldom spoke of his mother
or his child. He seemed, in the revival

62 Harper's Novelettes

of animal life that had como to him, to
find sufficient satisfaction in the mere
facts of sun, wind, sleep, food, laughter,
and converse. He had preserved that un
speakably precious thing which he had
clutched with eager hands. It was his.
He lived. To-day was to-day; all that
went before was with yesterday's seven
thousand years, and to-morrow was an
unknown quantity.

Claudia had begun to take up other
tasks. She went into the kitchen at least
once a day to direct the cooking, and she
often prepared dishes with her own hands,
transforming the table by these ministra
tions. She kept Henry Crowe's tent in
a condition of exquisite cleanliness, and
if any of the men required to have a
needle used they came to her, sure of
gracious service. She was a practical
and an honest woman, and she gave
these offices in reciprocity for the hos
pitality which she received — hospitality
for which she could make no other re
turn. James paid his way by his book
keeping — paid it and more, — and after a
time Crowe recognized this fact and gave
him a stated stipend. How much it was
Claudia did not know, for she never saw
any of it.

It is wonderful how Time can cheat

A Madonna of the Desert 63

the unwary. In this little sequestered
community, where each day was like the
last, where no events of importance dis
turbed the trivial usualness, the weeks
and the months slipped by like beads
on a string. The gray djinn of the waste
are wizards and mesmerize the soul. At
least every one seemed sordidly content,
though the mine gave small profits, and
nothing occurred to justify the sacrifice
represented by this isolation.

There was but one member of the
party who was actively discontented, and
that was the one who habitually spoke
words of content. Claudia Judic, as has
been said, had no thought at first but
to spend herself for her husband. She
was consumed with the desire to see him
well. It was as if she hung over a pit,
holding him from the abyss with her
fragile arms. But when she had lifted
him, when he stood at the rim — though,
perchance, somewhat too near the sheer
dark edge — her generic maternity re
curred to something more specific. She
began to remember the babe she had left
thousands of miles behind. Not but that
she had always remembered him in a
sense. A child is always in a mother's
mind, furnishing the substructure of
thought and feeling. Or, to speak with

64 Harper's Novelettes

clearer simile, the voice of the child is
forever audible to the mother; it is the
fundamental, ever-present harmony, and
as the diapason of the sea lies behind
the other harmonies of nature, making
the voices of the wind, the cries of men,
birds, and trees but accessories, so the
sounds of the world relate themselves to
the voice of the child in the heart's-ear
of the mother. This consciousness had
always been Claudia's. But now more
definite longing came to her. She was
ready for her babe, and therefore her
being cried out for him. Nor was it
alone her spirit that made this demand,
nor yet merely that she might learn how
he had grown in thought, what words
came to his lips, what expectations and
fears looked out of his heaven-blue eyes.
It was these things, truly, but it wa3
much more. Her whole body desired him.
The passion of the lover for his mistress
is a little thing compared to this mater
nal hunger. Her arms ached, literally,
to clasp him, her shoulders ached to bear
his weight, her feet ached to run in his
service; her eyes were hot for want of
beholding him. At night she dreamed
she felt him tugging at her long hair,
or nestling his satin-soft and dimpled
hand in her bosom.

A Madonna of the Desert 65

She did not dare to speak. More than
ever James needed her. His health would
have deserted him with his first week's
residence in a less arid climate, and there
were other than physical reasons why
she now felt she must remain with him.
She set herself against the atmosphere of
the camp, contriving this thing and that
to keep her husband with her after work-
hours, and pouring her love upon him
like a libation. She gave so freely that
she did not realize that she was giving,
and neither, indeed, did James. He took
her devotion as he did the sunshine, not
analyzing the cause of his elasticity of
heart, nor, perhaps, understanding it. It
is not the way with most men to notice
the presence of happiness, but only the
absence of it.

"It's a free life," he would say to
his wife. "I never dreamed, Claudia,
till we came here, how free life could be.
I wouldn't go back to the conventionali
ties and restraints for anything that
could be given me. Oh, if I had my
health, of course, it might be different!
But as it is, this is the life for me."

It never seemed to occur to him that she
wanted to go back. And she knew there
was not enough money with which to pay
for that long journey. They were all but

66 Harper's Novelettes

penniless. Such small investment as they
had — and it was only a few hundred dol
lars — Claudia had placed at the disposal
of her mother-in-law to use for the child.
She was much too proud to ask her
husband's cousin for any money, and,
indeed, he had hard enough work at
times to pay off his men and purchase
the supplies.

It was not oftener than once a fort
night that the wagon was sent for the
mail. Then it went the forty miles to
San Miguel and ten miles beyond, fol
lowing along the railroad to the town of
Santa Cerro, where there was a supply-
store as well as a post-office. The hour of
return was always uncertain. The men
were sent turn and turn about, that they
might have the taste of the pleasures of
the town, and if these proved particu
larly enticing, the return of the wagon
might be delayed a good many hours,
sometimes even a day or two. Such
dereliction as this met with general dis
approbation, it is true, but it was looked
upon in the light of an accident, which
the man who had lapsed from the path
of rectitude and punctuality regarded
with almost as much regret as did his
fellow campers.

Mail-days became active torture to

A Madonna of the Desert 67

Claudia Judic. She would await with
tense expectation the appearance upon the
horizon of the dusty "schooner" drawn
by its four "clay-bank" mules. For
tunately her tent stood farthest desert-
ward, and sitting at her door she could
see for five miles down the level floor of
the mesa. Certain days she could see
even farther. She had a remarkable
sight, and the desert life sharpened it.
She could pick out a bird that others
could not see, could catch its wings
glinting in the sun in the burning sap
phire; note the distant movements of
the prairie-dogs and catch the flick of
the rabbit's tail when none but herself
could detect them. Sometimes for hours
she sat with her eyes f ocussed on the most
distant visible part of the dusty mesa.
But the most terrible moment of all, per
haps, was when the wagon was entering
camp. She was suspicious if the driver
chanced to withhold his gaze from her,
imagining that he had no letter and was
loath to confess it; if he signalled her
with his glance, she was equally certain
it was from pity, and that he had come
letterless. She felt like shrieking with
impatience while she stood among the
others, commanding her face to impassiv
ity, till the letters were handed round.

68 Harper's Novelettes

It was taken for granted that nothing
was to be done by any one till that cere
mony was over. Men were excused from
their work, meals stood uneaten, every
thing waited for this event.

A yet more poignant instant came
when the letter was actually in her hand.
She could not bring herself to read it
before the others, and often she could
hardly summon the strength to walk
away with it to her tent. Then, alone,
she hesitated to tear it open, and would
compel herself to the nice use of her pen
knife, opening the letter properly. At
the first reading she could understand
nothing. Her eyes would eat up the
words, which conveyed no meaning to her.
All was as confused as if it had been
written in a foreign tongue. But she
would discipline herself to patience and
to perception, and slowly, word by word,
like a child learning to read, she would
follow her mother-in-law's small, neat
chirography through the closely writ
ten pages.

' Usually the letters were filled with
anecdotes of Jamie — he had teeth like
grains of rice; he was running around
the yard alone; he was talking, and there
would be an attempt to reproduce his
speeches. Now he had had some esca-

A Madonna of the Desert 69

pade, now some unusual pleasure; or he
was indisposed with a cold, or he had a
new Sunday frock, or his grandmother
had bought him some toys. The reports
were minute and merciful. Across the
jealousy which a woman feels for a
son's wife the mother -bond spanned,
making the old mother compassionate to
the young one. She actually refrained
from telling all the child's loveliness and
cleverness lest she should cause unneces
sary torture. She tried to think of ways
in which Claudia could contrive to come
back for a visit; she apologized for not
being able, physically or financially, to
bring the child out to Camp Crowe.

It was in the second year that Claudia
began to lay a plan. She had accustomed
herself to the idea that if her husband
was to live at all he must stay where
he was. He was making himself useful,
and his income was now of some account.
Claudia began to ask him for a little
each week, and this she scrupulously put
away. She was nest-building, and once
the idea seized her, it became an absorb
ing passion.

"I want a house, Henry," she said
one night to her husband's cousin.

They were walking, as they often did,
up and down, on the soft earth, in the

70 Harper's Novelettes

wild wonder of the sunset. It turned
their very faces into gold, tinged their
sun-faded hair with glory, and lighted
their eyes with a sort of over-beauty.
Their clothes no longer appeared worn
and work-stained, but garments splendid.
When they spoke simple words, it was
as those who can afford to use plain lan
guage, because of some argent richness of
thought lying behind the words. About
them was vastness; and their isolation
became at such moments not pitiable, but
proud. They seemed allied to historic
desert-dwellers, and they felt sure of the
possession of the virtues which have made
such dignified among men — the virtues
of hospitality, of courage, of tribal faith.
This night the glow was paler than it
sometimes was, and they spoke softly,
and of home things, Claudia following
with idle gaze a humming-bird that
nested in the branching cactus, unafraid
of harm.

"You should have had a house long
ago," said Crowe, "only I had a fear
that you might think we were trying to
tie you down here. Neither James nor
I wish to do that, of course."

" Destiny has made this my home,"
she said, gravely. "It is here that I
live." There was no sadness in the tone.

A Madonna of the Desert 71

The soft vibrations of the voice seemed
tinged with a gentle pride.

"I would have built a house for my
self," continued her companion, " only
Fve always liked that little bunch of
tents. It reminds me of a Bible picture
I used to look at when I was a little
fellow. Probably the picture was all
wrong, and that tents of that particular
sort had nothing to do with the case;
but, anyway, it's in my mind and won't
get out. The mules have been a real
cross to me. I always wanted camels and
some date-palms."

Claudia .gave a gurgling, birdlike laugh.

"I know," she said; "but, dear me!
you never can have camels. And you
can't make a tent-woman out of me. I'm.
not that kind, you see."

" No," admitted Crowe, looking at her,
"you aren't."

She had never lost her look of fragility,
of gentleness. She was essentially do
mestic, Her smile was made to welcome
one at the threshold. Her voice was
for sheltered rooms. It suited itself to
the hearth, the cradle, and the family
table. The wild might be all about her,
but she remained a tame thing, a creature
of roof and fire, of songs and dreams,
of the quiet arts, of housed loves.

72 Harper's Novelettes

So the men were set to work to put
her up an adobe. It was in two parts,
with a patio between, and in the patio
ehe swung hammocks and set certain
potted vines — things not of that environ
ment. One room was for sleeping. It
was bare and clean and comfortable, with
the air blowing in from every side, if
the occupants so willed.

The other room was for living — for it
was still Crowe's idea to have his cousins
eat at the general table, that being
economy both of food and service. This
second room Claudia decorated with
the conventionalized leaf of the yucca
splashed in dull red upon the walls. She
had, among the things she had brought
from home with her, a roll of dark-red
Indian cotton necked with peacock's
feathers, and of this she made draperies
and a couch-cover. James's invalid-chair
and her own rocker, brought over from
Santa Cerro, stood beside the reading-
table, and there were a few books and
twenty photographs of Jamie. The floor
of pounded earth was made gay with
Indian rugs, and baskets, both for use
and ornament, played a conspicuous part
in the furnishing. A well-tended olla
stood in the shadiest corner, and a flower
ing Mexican shawl flaunted itself — a

A Madonna of the Desert 73

piece of flamboyant tapestry — from the
wall. It was rather a gay little apart
ment, and when its mistress was in it
her qualities of femininity seemed to be
come accentuated.

" I would know it was your room,
Claudia," said Henry Crowe, "if I
stumbled in it without a notion that you
were this side of the Rockies."

It seemed to speak of home and old
association to Judic, too, arid he was in
it a good deal more than might have
been expected. He and Crowe got in
the way of playing chess together, and
Claudia sewed or watched them.

But this room, sociable as it was, could
not be said to be her favorite. She liked
better the night-room — the room where
she slept. For sleep had come to be the
doorway to an enchanted castle of
Heart's Desire. There baby kisses were
ready at hand to warm a mother's starved
lips; baby hands tugged at one's skirts;
a baby voice shattered the great bubble
of silence. Sometimes, even, warm,
down-soft baby fingers cuddled in one's
palm. And when dawn came, overbright,
awaking one to the bald facts of life,
there was — well, anything but that which
came in dreams.

By common consent the group of
6

74 Harper's Novelettes

pinon-trees near Mrs. Judic's adobe was
considered as her private garden, though
no wall surrounded it save the blue
horizon, and no flowers grew there ex
cept those of the fancy. But the scrub-
pines made a sort of screen, so low did
their branches grow upon the trunks ; and
the point of honor, which was to avoid
scrutinizing Mrs. Judic when she retired
to^this spot, gave it a privacy which walls
might not have secured. It had from
the first been Claudia's custom to spend
much time there, but when for several
days she came to haunt the spot, the
men grew curious. And at last Sandy
Rich played the Peeping Tom. Mrs.
Judic had gone for a canter, and when
her white mare and blue frock were
splotches of color on the mesa, Sandy,
ventured into the "garden." What he
saw made him worried for a moment
about Mrs. Judic's sanity. For there
were little shelves fitted in between the
trees, with low benches before them,
and on the shelves were bits of broken
china, glittering pieces of quartz, mica
chips, a foolish array of shards and scraps
such as a child might gather. Sandy,
heavy-jawed and wide-eyed, stood staring.
lie thought hard and long, and by de
grees an idea dawned.

A Madonna of the Desert 75

"It's the kid!'7 he decided. "She's
plannin' to git the kid out."

He told first one and then another of
the men, till all the camp knew. It
needed this explanation, perhaps, to ac
count for the change that was coming
over her. Something half coquettish or
expectant, something sweetly and timor
ously gay, showed itself in her manner
and her looks. She was laying aside the
old frocks which she had worn till they
were almost in rags, and was appearing
in new clothes, made by her own hands,
and girded with scarlet or blue. She
donned little cloth caps of the same col
ors, and she had the appearance when she
came from her tent of having a new
toilet. The sum represented in these
purchases was a minute one, but fore
thought had been given, that was evident.
James Judic happened to mention, casual
ly, that his wife was sending back a
red tam-o'-shanter because she didn't like
the shade.

It may have been about this time that
he began to notice that he had lost his
abject servitor. He no longer required
close service, it is true^ but his sick van
ity had got into the way of expecting it.
His wife, however, appeared to have too
many matters in hand to spend her time

70 Harper's Novelettes

in watching or anticipating his moods.
She was continually occupied with some
thing, as he noticed with an irritation
of which he felt ashamed and for which
he could not account. She was riding,
or housekeeping, or sewing, or touching
with fingers reminiscent of old days the
zither which Henry Crowe had bought
for her on her last birthday. The music,
soft as an ajolian harp, crept into the air,
spending itself like a slow wave. Under
her fingers it was as soft and yearning
as a woman's voice; and, indeed, the
melodies took to themselves — or so it
seemed to him who had given her the
instrument — the accents of supplication.
They appeared to woo and call and coax.
Sandy Rich, striding up and down in
the night, unseen and vaguely dreaming
of things he could not voice, tormented,
too, with a pain he did not understand,
made out the meaning of all this.

"She's callin' the kid," he said, in
his beard. " An', by gosh ! if I was dead
I believe I'd hear her — callin' like that!"

Presently it was known that Sandy's
surmises had been correct, and that " the
kid " was coming out in the care of a
woman who lived at Towner, the next
village to Craven, and that she was
going on to Pasadena, and was to drop

A Madonna of the Desert 77

little Jamie Judic off at San Miguel,
where the train was to be slacked for
the purpose. The day was set. He was
coming; and it was considered good form
for every one to make some reference to
it when Mrs. Judic was around.

"I tell ye what," said Sandy, "you'll
have to keep him clost to the house, Mis'
Judic. You mustn't let him git around
the blastin'."

"There's that colt of Nancy's," said
Crowe, speaking of the flecked colt of
the white mare. "By the time it's old
enough to saddle, Jamie '11 be the right
size to mount him."

" I cal'late we'll have to shet off Sandy's
vile swearin' tongue," declared Judson
Shafer, the overseer of the mill. " He
ain't fit for no kid to be around."

Crowe decided to build himself a home ;
and after that had been built in the
odd hours of the men, Shafer, the over
seer, went in with two other men to
put up a third residence. Camp Crowe
began to lose its gipsy look — its appear
ance of being an overnight caravan.

Moreover, Claudia contrived a sun
dial, and she got Sandy Rich to build
a spring-house. It was of rough rock,
with seats by the side, and Sandy fretted
out, crudely, in the stone, this doggerel:

78 Harper's Novelettes

Comfort give to great and least,
Wandering man and weary beast.

She sent for some pepper-tree saplings
and willow cuttings, and set them out
near the spring, where they took kindly
to their environment.

But Claudia Judic, working, laughing,
cajoling, was, after all, merely cheating
time. Her hands were busy, but her
eyes were, so to speak, on the clock. She
was set to one tune, wound up for a
certain hour, focussed to a coming event !

"I think," she said, gravely, to the
men at supper one night, "that though
it may seem foolish in me, I'd better
start for the train the night before Jamie
is expected. You see, starting at dawn
is all very well ordinarily, and I know
you've made it with the mules over* and
over again. Yet, if one of them should
happen to fall lame or anything break
about the wagon — She broke off in
horror at the thought.

"But where could you sleep?" asked
Crowe, turning a deep gaze upon her.
"You can't lie out in the desert, you
know."

Claudia had a vision of the dark won
der of the pulsing sky, and the star of
the Nativity above the place where the
Babe lay.

A Madonna of the Desert 79

" Oh, I should not at all mind
out in the sand," she said. "And in
the morning- we could build a fire and
make our coffee, and have Mr. Hull over
to eat with us. I have always liked Mr.
Hull so much!" She referred to the
station agent who had signalled her
good luck the day of her arrival.

So it was agreed. Sandy was to drive,
and Judic and his wife were to go in.
the wagon, which was to be taken on to
Santa Cerro for supplies, and then, re
turning to San Miguel, pick them up.

But from excitement or defect of will,
James Judic fell ill, suddenly and acute
ly, and his wife could not leave him. She
came to breakfast and told the men.

" I can't go," she said, in a voice they
had never heard her use before. "Mr.
Judic is very ill indeed. He'll be well
by to-morrow or the next day if I nurse
him properly, but I couldn't leave him.
It's out of the question. You'll have to

— to go alone, Mr. Rich."

A stormy silence spread around the
table. Tornado seemed imminent, and
Claudia quivered to it. She held the
men steady with her brave, tortured eyes.

" Mr. Judic is terribly distressed about

— about disappointing me," she said.
"But he knows that Mr. Rich will take

8o Harper's Novelettes

good care of — of — " She could not utter
another syllable. For the first time in
their three years' experience with her
she broke down. But she had a proud
frankness about it. She put her hand
first to her trembling lips and then to
her eyes, and arose with dignity and made
her way to the door.

Sandy Rich was off early. He started,
indeed, a day in advance of the appointed
time, but there was, of course, the mar
keting to do at Santa Cerro.

" Thunder and mud !" sighed Sandy,
"but I'll bet them mules do go lame!
I'll bet you two to one the darned wagon
breaks! I'd ruther be chased by Injuns
than go on this yere errand!"

" See you do it well," growled Judson
Shafer. " If you come back here with
out that kid, you'll be lynched."

It was meant for a jest, but it sounded
curiously unlike one. Sandy knew the
eyes that watched from the adobe by the
pinons, and as he flicked his sand-
colored mules down the mesa, they seemed
to be burning holes in his back — those
eyes with their soft fires. He resisted
the impulse to turn as long as he could.
It seemed almost too familiar, too con
fidential, for him to respond to this

A Madonna of the Desert 81

mystic and imperious message. But the
force was too compelling. He turned
and waved his hand. Something scarlet
flashed back and forth in answer. It was
the red cap — of the right shade — which
Claudia Judic had got to please the
critical, heaven-hlue eyes of her son !

Work went badly at the blastings and
worse at the mill. An air of uncertainty
pervaded everything. Mrs. Judic was not
at dinner nor at supper. The sound of
her zither was not heard. An appalling
and, it seemed, a presageful silence hung
over her house. The night settled down,
with purple sky and stars of burning
beauty; the dawn was pellucid, with a
whispering ground-wind. But still, at
breakfast, she was not visible. The camp
had fed and battened on her good cheer,
but she hid herself in the hour of her
fears. The gay mask was down, and she
spared them the sight of the bared, truth
ful face.

The long day waned — the long, bland,
golden, unemphasized day. It drew to its
close, as all days have to, whether of
agony or ecstasy. And on the mesa, a
little bunch against the sky, appeared
the familiar wagon.

"It's Sandy," said the men, drawing
long breaths and lighting their pipes— for

82 Harper's Novelettes

supper was Just over. "It's that fool
Sandy." ^ And they smoked silently, wait
ing- in vicarious agony.

Had the train been smashed? Had
the woman kidnapped the child? Had
the child died on the way? These ques
tions, crudely put and jokingly ex
changed, represented the sympathy felt
for that invisible woman in the adobe.
They did not know that at their utmost
they could encompass only a portion of
her fears.

It came on along the mesa — the wagon
came on. It was at first an exasperating-
ly small thing, but it grew. It attained
its normal size. It drove into the camp
yard. A glorious gold from the utter
most west enveloped the earth, and all
things were visible by it, though beauti
fied. They all saw Sandy there in the
wagon, and saw him sitting — alone.
The men were as statues — immovable as
those hideous dancers back on the old
trail — as Claudia Judic came out of the
adobe and drifted like an ungraved ghost
down the warm sands. She was dressed
in white — none of them had ever seen her
so dressed before — and she wore a little
trailing vine in her hair.

The eyes they had known so patient
had a different look in them now. They

A Madonna of the Desert 83

held a consuming expectancy, a terrible
impatience, a sort of divine torment.
But there was only Sandy on the seat,
busying himself with something back in
the wagon, and for very mercy the men
looked away.

What did she mean by coming on like
that when she saw there was only Sandy ?
They were indignant. They wanted to
shout to her to go back. Shafer tried to
wave to her, but his arms fell powerless.
She came on so swiftly, too ! A miserable
panic seized upon the men. They wanted
to run.

Then, as they looked, as they flinched,
as they inwardly cursed, up above the
seat back rose a tousled head of gold, a
pair of wondering eyes filled with baby-
wisdom, a dew-damp face flushed from
sleep, smiling yet tremulous!

Sandy leaned back and lent a hand.

" Up with you, old man !" he cried.
"Here ye are, honey-heart, and here's
yer ma!"

They saw her come on and reach up
her slender arms. They saw the boy look
at her with adorable timidity; saw her
beaming beauty banish his fears, saw her
gather him close and walk away with his
head pillowed in her neck.

Sandy got down from the wagon seat

84 Harpers Novelettes

and stood on the shining earth in the
glorified light. He began to unharness
the mules, and three men came to assist
him. Silence hung heavy sweet. But
Sandy valorously broke it.

"I calkilate I don't git lynched," he
said.

The Prophetess of the Land of
No-Smoke

BY MARIE MANNING

OLD Chugg had brought the stage
into town one afternoon on a
rocking gallop that to the initi
ated signified some information of im
portance, and, without leaving the box,
had given some advance news in panto
mime. He had a passenger inside — an
old man with a beard like a prophet, who
later went about the vicious little town
affixing signs to such resorts as apparent
ly stood most grievously in need of refor
mation. The notices merely stated that
a prayer-meeting would be held on No-
Smoke prairie on the following Thursday,
and that all would be welcome. But as
Chugg's pantomime had consisted of
elaborate manipulation of a phantom
skirt, with sundry coquettish rollings of
the eye and some clerical gesticulation,
it had not taken the cognoscenti long to

86 Harper's Novelettes

discover that they might shortly expect a
visit from the woman preacher.

Town had long heard of her — the fame
of her preaching was broadcast. " When
she left a settlement," Chugg had been
kind enough to add, "you wondered if
she had done it alone, or if she had had
any seventeen-year locusts in to help her."
So town had decided to respond to the
invitation as a man — not that it felt it
self as seriously in need of reformation
as of amusement.

The fire and brimstone that had been
hurled at it by the migratory preachers
that came to No-Smoke at long intervals
seldom failed to enliven the life of the
range; and while no outward disrespect
to the men of the jeremiads would have
been permitted, their diatribes seldom
failed to add to the common fund of
innocent amusement. The men were will
ing to pay well for their entertainment,
too, when the hat was passed, and, on
the whole, they considered that matters
between themselves and the casual shep
herds that came to No-Smoke stood
about even. And they would bid an out
wardly chastened adieu to the parson and
await the next camp happening — which
might be vaudeville combined with the
sale of patent medicine, some desperate

The Prophetess 87

act demanding the swift, unrelenting
justice of the plains; or another preacher
with his tales of fire and brimstone. Oil
the whole, the woman preacher promised
more in the way of entertainment than
her brothers in judgment. And one who
knew them well would have scented mis
chief in the men's demureness as they
rode forth from town as sedate as a com
pany of pilgrims near ing a shrine.

Spring had come slowly this year in
the Land of No- Smoke. Its name, which
in the original tongue stood for its great
loneliness — the place where no camp-fire
nor the curling smoke of tepee intruded
upon the silent councils of the hills, — had
of late years lost its significance. The
Indians had left the land to the sun and
the silence and the evil spirits that, ac
cording to their traditions, dwelt there.
But the big cattle outfits had no tradi
tions, and when they saw that the land
was good for grazing they brought many
herds, and the silent spaces of No-Smoke
fell into the ways that were strange to it.
Town sprang into being overnight. The
cracked tinkle of the dance-hall piano,
the clinking of glasses and spurs, laughter
loud if not always mirthful, pistol-shots,
— for life there was essentially a thing
to be played with, — all contributed their

88 Harper's Novelettes

sprightly chronicle, till at last the Land
of No-Smoke became a byword for all
that was unseemly. And the parsons on
their way to towns of better repute
hurled damnation at it and left it to
its evil ways.

" I take it," said Tom Jarvis, who was
in the lead of the string of horsemen
winding their way over the old Indian
trail in the direction of the prayer-
meeting, " that we're nearing this ycre
spiritual round-up. The lady parson is
even now heating her branding-irons in
yonder tent. The herd " — he waved a com
prehensive hand toward his companions — •
" will be druv to the back of the wagon,
where the lady will brand it accordin' to
taste. 'Rock of Ages' and the passin'
of the hat — especially the passin' of the
hat — will conclood the services."

Jarvis was undeniably good to look at;
even men would admit it. His black,
curly head easily topped the crowd that
would collect at any of their foregather-
ing-places in the hope of one of his in
imitable stories. Jarvis was what was
known about camp as " a tall liar," but
his work was invariably artistic. His
delicately aquiline profile hinted at Latin
descent, and the sombrero tilted rakishly
but the more closely suggested the resem-

The Prophetess 89

blaiice to one of Velasquez's gentlemen.
Yet Jarvis spoke the "English" of the
range with perfect content, applied his
knife to his food with more than a
dilettante's skill, and abhorred what he
would have called "dude manners."
There was a cniel straightness to the lips
when he laughed, and he laughed more
with women than with men. It was said
about town that he had a wife in Texas
whom he had quarrelled with, but of this
Jarvis had never spoken. He was still
in the lead of the string of horsemen
heading toward the prayer-meeting when
Saunders spurred his pinto abreast of
Jarvis's sorrel.

" The whole country seems to be takin'
on about us, and now here's this preachin*
woman." He spoke pettishly, as though
the criticism of the community of which
he was an unimportant integer were a
personal affront.

Jarvis half turned in his saddle and re
garded with frank amusemert the chinless
face with its round eyes and puffy cheeks.

"Yes," he said, with the keen enjoy
ment of a big boy making merry with a
little one: " The Platte Valley Lyre in
that last editorial allowed that the bark
was on our manners a heap; said we had
taken the cure for the water habit, till

7

90 Harper's Novelettes

the sight of a puddle set us barkin' like a
caucus of black-and-tans."

" You don't say so !" said Saunders, per
ceptibly moved by this statement. "I'd
just hate my folks to hear that."

The camp of the woman preacher was
before them. The eternal flatness of the
prairie was broken by the outline of a
little white tent and a big uncovered
wagon. A pair of lean horses close by
were cropping the scant pasturage of
early spring. These human appurte
nances seemed small and as feebly inade
quate to cope with the giant forces about
them as a child's toys would have been.
The old man who had affixed the notices
of the prayer-meeting sat on one of the
wagon shafts, sulkily whittling. His at
titude toward the impending service
seemed analogous to that of the com
pulsory host whose womenfolk have
bullied him into giving a party. He con
tented himself with a churlish nod to the
men and whittled as if whittling were
the business of the day.

But with the appearance of Miriam the
sanctimonious demureness of the congre
gation, which had not been put out of
countenance in the least by the old man's
lack of cordiality, now gave way to self-
conscious shyness. She was so unlike th0

The Prophetess 9T

drawings they had made of her on the
walls of Magee's that the sudden revela
tion of their shortcomings as draughts
men had the effect of turning the tables,
so to speak, and scoring a joke against
themselves. She had no real claims to
actual beauty — which made the almost
thrilling effect of her presence the more
amazing. She looked her history. All
the selflessness, the long battling against
sordid conditions, all the medieval mys
ticism, were written in that face, in the
gray eyes that might have seen visions,
in the mouth that would be tender even
in old age. She had the look of a
young sibyl whose heart is wrung that
she must speak the words of sorrowful
human destinies.

The men made way for her reverently.
Their awkward deference had in it a
shade more of awe, perhaps, than even
the most beautiful woman might have
taken unquestioningly as the rightful
tribute of a country where the woman-
famine made itself insistent at every turn.
Her glance swept the throng of faces
crowded close about the wagon, then came
back to Tom Jarvis. Perhaps it was his
general bearing, so startlingly at variance
with the rest of the group, that at first
challenged her attention. His easy atti-

9 2 Harper's Novelettes

tude had in it something- of flattery,
something- of curiosity, something of per
sonal demand. The strained attention
that characterized the rest of them was
in the case of Jarvis conspicuously lack
ing. He was frankly interested in her,
but not as a possible proselyte to any
scheme of salvation that she might have
up her sleeve, so to speak. Again she
returned his glance, and the words al
ready pressing at her lips took flight.
Something there was that seemed to speed
from those half-smiling eyes beneath the
tilted sombrero and bring with it con
fusion. For the first time since she had
received "the call" to speak to these peo
ple of the wilderness she was sensible of
self, of an ignoble desire to acquit her
self with distinction ;— the serenity of the
prophetess had given place to the self-
consciousness of the woman.

<<God! O God!" she called, and her
voice was muffled as one who calls feebly
in the anguish of a dream. But the sound
broke the spell; the congregation was not
called to wait longer for her preaching.
Miriam spoke to them from the big open
wagon in which she had journeyed. On
the seat was the old man, her father,
his hand in his prophet's beard, looking
up at her— though he lost the magic of

The Prophetess 93

her words in his wonder at her gift of
speech., Her gaze was beyond them all — •
straight into the blue. The wide shining
eyes gave glowing testimony of her abun
dant inspiration. After that first break
ing of the spell the outflow of her sin
cerity bore her along with the force of
a torrent. The grim lines relaxed in the
men's faces; they looked up at her, a
group of great, overgrown boys with
some latent flash of the ingenuousness
of childhood lighting up their russet,
tanned faces.

" Our Heavenly Father," she prayed,
te give me the power to speak Thy word
as Thou wouldst have it spoken, lovingly
and with mercy. Let these men feel
through me, unworthy medium, that Thou
art with them in this wilderness, — in this
land of such great loneliness that savage
peoples long ago called it by a name that
means there is no home in all the land.
And calling it thus, they left it to the
suns and the snows and the silence that
were here always. And if these men,
in their desolation, sometimes try to for
get that there are no good women and
little children who are glad of their com
ing — if they try to forget these things —
do not let them think that Thou judgest
them without understanding. False

94 Harper's Novelettes

prophets have told them that Thy wrath
burns as the summer sun on the desert
sand, but tell them through me that it
is not^so. For Thy mercy, boundless as
this wilderness, is with them always."

She stretched out her hands to them
in quivering- entreaty; the tears streamed
down her face. The men were moved by
them more than by the words she had
spoken; — a woman had wept over them,
a good woman. An inarticulate murmur
ran through the group. They edged up
closer to the wagon and listened like
hounds with every sense abeyant.

Subconsciously she was aware of an
influence drawing her gaze from the
mountains, and the necessity for resisting
it. Then in an unguarded moment her
eyes wandered from the snows of the
towering peaks to the group of faces be
fore her, and her glance encountered the
smiling eyes of Tom Jarvis. Tolerance,
indulgence even, there were in that nar
row look that told unmistakably he was
not taking her seriously. Eealizing this,
there came an end to her inspiration.
She was no longer the shepherdess of No-
Smoke; she was only a woman who had
done her best. She asked a blessing on
their meeting and took refuge in the
little white tent.

The Prophetess 95

The men shook themselves like dogs
that had been through deep water— all
but Tom Jarvis, whose narrow eyes con
tracted, then he yawned. Some of the
men began to talk to the old man ^ on
the wagon shaft. Miriam remained with
in the tent.

"Say!" said Softy Saunders, his fin
gers twirling a dirty dollar bill, "that
was a heap fashionable sermon, but why
don't they pass the hat T

Jarvis smiled his narrow smile. " She's
inside the tent looking up a deep one — the
stovepipe hat that the old man wore when
he run a faro-bank over in Tucson."

The men changed countenance; the
fleeting boyish expression with which
they had listened to her preaching gave
place to their every-day reckless look.
The haggard lines came back, and there
was some unseemly laughter.

" Did you see this man deal faro ovei1
in Tucson?"

" I never see his own particular bunch
of features hovering over a faro-table,"
Jarvis admitted, " but I ain't been out in
this country for ten years without pickin'
up the art of readin' brands some. See
an old graybeard trailin' round the coun
try with a likely-lookin' young gal, and
I'll show you a coin round-up all right.

96 Harper's Novelettes

Sometimes it's singin' an' voyleen, some
times it's faro, sometimes it's preachin',
but you pay for it, no matter what's
its alias."

"But if you ain't seen this identical
old man and this identical gal dealin'
faro, you got no call to run felonous
brands on to 'em and turn 'em loose for
contumely," — Softy Saunders grew two
inches, — " and by your leave I think you
are a liar."

A dozen hands dragged them apart.
The old man on the wagon shaft, talking
ramblingly to whomever would listen, had
heard no word of the dispute, but now
burst into feeble cackles of senile laugh
ter. "Let 'em scrap; let 'em scrap — ha,
ha! — used to be a great scrapper myself;
stopped it now, though. She " — he jerked
his thumb toward the white tent — " she
don't like it!" He continued to laugh
feebly, looking at them from one to the
other, his eyes deep in the mists of
seventy odd years. " Used to do right
smart o' odd jobs back home," and again
the ghostly laughter. " Whitewashed Mis'
Todd's fence and mended her chicken-
coop all in one day — ha, ha! I tell you
there was a livin' in it, but she" — and
again the accusing thumb pointed toward
the tent — "heard there warn't no min-

The Prophetess 97

isters out here, and she would sell out an
come. Said what was good enough for
Matthew was good enough for us. House
belonged to her; her mother left it that
way; an' here we be 'most ready for
the poorhouse."

Jarvis looked about with a triumphant
smile. " Surely, uncle, you'll let me pass
the hat among the boys ?"

In a twinkling the mist rolled away
from the dull eyes.

"If she don't catch us — you couldn't
pass no hat — but you might give me any
little thing." He looked apprehensively
toward the tent. Jarvis sent his eyes up
and drew his nose down, and grinned
around the circle like a cow-punching
Mephistopheles. Saunders had already
dropped his dirty dollar in the clutching
tentacles of the old man. He answered
Jarvis's grimace with a wink. Several
of the men followed and deposited coins
or bills, according to their capacity for
receiving and retaining sentimental im
pressions under adverse circumstances.
The old man cackled feebly as he
opened and shut his fist. His eyes had
taken on new lustre; they glowed pale
ly, like a candle burning behind a cob-
webbed pane.

" Father ! father !" The cry, full of dis-

9-S Harper's Novelettes

tress, rang from the tent, and Miriam
ran to the old man and opened his hand
quickly, as if she were taking some hurt
ful spoil from a child. She turned to the
men with eyes full of disappointment.
" Didn't I say one word to your hearts ?"
She pointed to the hills against the sky
line, blue on blue, till the long chain
melted into the snow crests. " And I
came all that way to speak to you, and
this Is your answer!" She crowded the
mon«y into Jarvis's hand so carelessly
that some of the smaller coins rolled to
the ground. "Father is old; he does
not understand." With infinite tender
ness she led him toward the tent; he
was whimpering like a child. " Yes, yes,"
she soothed him, "I'll get your supper
now, and you're to have the fresh eggs
we got yesterday, — and I'll make the cof
fee strong and sweet."

" It looks mighty like the quenchers
were on you, Jarvis," said one of the
men, lounging up to the doubting Thomas
as he tightened his cinch. Town was
far away; the sun, a flaming ball, was
dropping behind the western range like
a round lantern caught afire.

Jarvis continued busy with his cinch,
and when he looked up he seemed less
sure of himself, less debonair.

The Prophetess 99

" You're right. The quenchers are on
me if any one will drink with such a
hound !" He flung a leg across the sorrel,
and soon was one with the shadows of
the foot-hills. At the fork of the road
they turned to look back. Miriam had
come from the white tent and begun to
gather dry sage-brush for the evening fire.
They watched her crouching, moving fig
ure, now silhouetted against the red, now
lost In the shadows, as she went and
came among the dry stalks of last year's
rank abundance. The line of the head,
the meek profile, the round throat melt
ing into the simply gathered bodice, were
all so many arguments in her favor. The
eloquence of Demosthenes would not have
prevailed against the solitary figure go
ing about her homely task on the lone
ly prairie.

They went back to town, and not a
man among them could have told what
it was that had befallen him and robbed
his pipe of its savor or Mr. Magee's
saloon of its accustomed sorcery. They
talked it over far into the night, and
decided — with perhaps not more than
ninety-five per cent, of self-deception —
that what really ailed them was the de
sire of a firm purpose of amendment.
They cast about for a convincingly

ioo Harper's Novelettes

oblique argument to detain the woman
preacher among them, and a coveted sal
vation seemed to meet the greatest num
ber of artistic requirements. While it
was yet early morning a committee was
in its saddles, flogging in the direction
of No-Smoke to present a petition for a
daily prayer-meeting for one week. They
did not make a second mistake of offer
ing pecuniary inducement, — but might
they not bring a little game to the
camp, as the country was fairly run
ning over with things that needed kill
ing? This to the old man, who at the
suggestion seemed to strike off a spark
or two of cordiality from his generally
flinty demeanor.

But the prophetess would not commit
herself. She had a journey to make to
the north, and — her manner was gently
deprecatory— she was not sure that the
Lord had need of her work in the Land
of No-Smoke. At which ensued such
sanctimonious protestations, such cres-
cendos and decrescendos of sighing,
such rolling up of eyes and dropping
of mouth corners, that had these bronzed
men been in anything but a frame
of mind utterly unnatural they would
have been the first to laugh at them
selves. The prophetess told them that

The Prophetess . it>i

she would pray for light, and if it
should be made manifest that it was the
will of the Master, she would stay and
pray with them daily for a week. They
thanked her and returned to town. And
the miracle of it was that no one laughed,
not even when they were out of ear
shot from her, nor yet when they had
dismounted at Magee's — dismounted
there merely for the sake of habit.
Trade was falling off, and the saloon
keeper, after a morning of unprecedented
leisure, poured himself a solitary draught
of consolation, and wondered what the
town was coming to.

Jarvis joined them. He had not been
one of the committee to go to No-Smoke
prairie to plead with the prophetess for
the prayer-meetings. Unlike the rest of
them, he had not mislaid his sense
of humor.

"Pass the sugar for the green-goose
berry tarts, Willy," the facetious Jarvis
called to an imaginary attendant, waving
his hand toward the soured-looking con
verts, who seemed devoid of inspiration
or occupation till such time as they
should return to the camp of the prophet
ess to hear of her decision. " Of course
the lady's goin' to pull her righteous
freight. A blind mule could see that

102 Harper's Novelettes

you are converted straight through to the
other side. ' Othello's occupation's gone,'
as the gent remarked in the Cheyenne
opera-house after he'd done strangling his
wife." And the newly regenerate were
forced to admit that the chances of
further spiritual aid seemed against them.
" I move," continued Jarvis, tilting his
sombrero till the white line above the
tan on his forehead showed, "that this
yere outfit regards me as its forlorn hope.
I ain't as yet found grace, and if this
here lady soul-sharp can be induced to
stop over, it will be because she's con
vinced that I shorely am in need of it.
I therefore move that I act as a committee
of one lost sheep, flocks out to her camp,
alone, and states the case. The chances
are that she'll rather enjoy plucking me
as a brand from the burning." They
had to admit the plausibility of this argu
ment. Jarvis it was who had refused
to take her seriously. Jarvis presenting
himself as a proselyte would not be with
out weight on his side of the argument.
They heartily urged on him the role of
envoy extraordinary and minister pleni
potentiary to the prophetess; but when
he left town, some half -hour later, on his
self-imposed errand of diplomacy, they
were conscious of a just indignation in

The Prophetess 103

seeing that ho wore a pair of new over
alls, and that the red silk handker
chief that sagged gracefully from his
bronzed throat was the one reserved for
state occasions.

The great plain of No-Smoke seemed
to yearn in its utter loneliness. On three
sides the hills girt it about, and from it
the pale spring sunshine, like some golden
vintage pouring from a broken cup,
streamed down to the great stark desert
beyond, that still slept the dreamless
sleep of frost-bound desolation. In the
uplands the wine of spring had begun
to flush into life all winter - numbed
things. The wind had the note of the
mating bird as it sang in the bare branches
of the cottonwoods, already feathery of
outline; the tiny cactus leaves were
shooting up from last year's shrivelled
stumps, their thorns yet as harmless as
the claws of a week - old kitten ; the
creek, full, deep-voiced, sang lustily of
abundance. It gave plenty or it gave
famine, as it brawled to the struggling
ranch-lands below. In the spring there
was human destiny in its singing. The
first faint earthy smell mingled with the
spice of the pines, and Jarvis breathed
deeply of its fragrance.

Though the few pitiful household ef-

104 Harper's Novelettes

fects of the old man and his daughter
were already packed and corded for the
onward move — the call to remain not
having heen made clear to Miriam — she
saw in the return of this solitary scoffer
a manifestation that left no room to
doubt the trend of duty. He had pre
sented himself shorn of all prankishness.
There was no mockery in the eyes that
met hers, no trace of any cynicism in the
voice that asked for help.

" Could I give it you, my brother,"
and again the quivering appeal of those
big, kindly hands, that looked capable
of so full a measure of tenderness,
"could I give you the grace to see His
mercy, — then indeed I would stay. But
if this need of yours be to make a mock
of me, to give my brothers cause for jest
and laughter, then it were better that
I go to those who have real need of my
poor ministering.". There was no anger
in her voice, nor any hint of wounded
pride at his failure to take her preaching
seriously; but only a gentle setting forth
of things expedient.

Jarvis bent Ms head. " It's true, lady,
I grinned last night like a wolf; but
don't you know that a man '11 grin when
the truth bites at his heart — grin to hide
the hurt, that he may not cry like a baby.

The Prophetess 105

Again his eyes sought hers and held
them captive; she wrestled blindly with
the strange force in her heart, with the
alien presence that had crept in like a
thief in the night and laid rough hands
on treasure that had seemed so secure.
She turned toward the hills — serene in
their strength. And all unconsciously she
thought her prayer aloud: "Lord, is it
I who am about to betray Thee? — To do
Thy will— or my will?"

Jarvis fell back. " I'm only a black
sheep," he said, " not worth saving.
Them Injuns you spoke of are better
worth while." The deceptive humility
of the man, born of a sudden revelation
of her character, carried the day. A lit
tle later he won his point and — practical
ly — the woman; but for the moment he
had been sincere.

She gently dismissed him when his er
rand was done, and no pretext that his
nimble wits could devise could shake her
resolution. But when he had gone she
watched horse and rider as they climbed
and dipped the trail, watched them till
they were one with the blur of the sky
line melting into the blue. Then she
went far away from the camp, and throw
ing herself face downward on the earth,
she prayed the frantic prayers of a worn-

8

io6 Harper's Novelettes

an who sees her little, every-day, familiar
world blow away like sand at the coming
of a storm.

Town awoke next morning1 to find itself
conscious of heroic promptings. It want
ed to vault to its saddle and ride off to
knightly deeds. It did not know in the
least what was the matter with it, but
separately and unitedly it was in love
with the woman preacher. The doors of
Ifagee's yawned wide, but there was no
coming nor going, and upon the unholy
little settlement rested a Sabbath calm
such as they remembered at home. The
mood of town became contagious; it
absorbed independent elements floating
through its dingy civic channels, and
stamped them with the current infection.
The fame of the woman preacher spread
to the uttermost eddy of the tiny settle
ment; those who had not heard her were
swept up and borne along on the en
thusiasm of those who had. And town
presented the unprecedented spectacle of
animation suspended for the great event
of the day — the prayer-meeting on the
plain of No-Smoke.

Daily the men presented themselves
humbly as pilgrims at a shrine. There
was not one of them who would not cheer
fully have made a crony of death for the

The Prophetess 107

chance of her favor, and yet there was
not one who thought himself worthy to
kiss the hem of her garment. Jarvis,
be it said, had no share in these hu
milities. He thought himself worthy any
favor that his vandal hand might grasp.
Women were dolls to Jarvis — dolls of
small consequence. For the same reason
—the courage that rushes in and casteth
out fear — it was Jarvis who elected to
act as deputy and bring the gifts of
game to the camp. During the visits
he managed to establish something ap
proaching intimacy with the old man.
He led him to talk of the days when he
had been a power in the politics of the
corner store at home; the days before
Miriam had sold their all and gone to
preach in the wilderness. The old man
had begun to look forward to these vis
its of Jarvis as agreeable intervals
of secularity.

It had come to be the last day; the
prayer-meeting that evening would bring
the week to a close. Miriam, spent with
the vigil of many wakeful nights, torn
by cruel questionings, took her over
burdened spirit to the silent counsel of
the great, plain where it gave to the
valley. Her resting-place was a giant
boulder enshrined in the twilight of the

io8 Harper's Novelettes

willow grove, which became as the judg
ment-seat to the woman preacher. There
were stern questionings to be put by
Miriam the judge, which Miriam the
woman must answer. An hour passed,
the inquisition lagged; the judge came
down from the bench and joined hands
with the prisoner in the dock, the culprit,
in whom there began to grow a subdued
choking suspense: "Would he come?
No, he could not be coming or her heart
would not drag like an anchored thing."
Then, for a moment, she saw the question
clearly, — she had consented to remain
because her will, fluid, unstable, had
flowed into the mould of his inclination
like water into a vessel. She shut her
eyes and prayed for strength, and when
she opened them horse and rider stood
sharp against the sky-line. The wisdom
of the judge, the perturbation of the
woman, prompted nothing more than a
mouthful of futile incongruous speeches.

He slid from his horse. There was
about him the air of one who brings
great treasure ; youth and spring and sun
shine and great strength he seemed to
heap at her feet.

"I've come for my answer, Miriam."
He took her hand like a flower already
plucked — a flower whose fragrance had

The Prophetess 109

grown to be something of a matter of
course. It was this imperious quality
that was at the root of Jarvis's success.
He rode at life full tilt, the force of
victory in his very aim. There was no
time for questionings. The clatter of
his horse's hoofs claimed attention, and
the beauty, the insolence, the precision
of his aim won the day.

He brushed aside her arguments; he
had not come to listen to objections, but
to trample them underfoot. They loved
— that was the supreme answer. What
did they owe the world, their world, a
handful of locoed cow-punchers, — every
mother's son of whom was in love with
her and lacked the wit to know it ? They
came snivelling after salvation, — much
use they had of it in the lives they led.

Miriam received these statements as so
many indictments against herself. They
had come to hear her, then, because she
was a woman, — of her ministerings there
had been no need. She hung her head
with the shame of it.

But Jarvis had again taken up the reel
of his argument, flung it broadcast, un
wound it so swiftly that her dazed per
ceptions could scarce follow. Her father
would be happier in town. The make
shifts of the wagon life were too hard

no Harper's Novelettes

on one of his years. Leave him what
money there was left, and when they
should be settled in California they
could send for him. Her own work
should go on; it would be all the better
for a little happiness. He would lend
her gladly to her poor, to the sick, to
those in tribulation. She should teach
him the secret of her beautiful serv
ice, — together they would do the work
she loved.

For one pitilessly clear moment Miri
am saw the true and the false go up and
down like buckets in a well. She saw
her arid journeyings over the desert, the
fretful complaining of her father, the
hunger, the thirst, the desolation, the lit
tle done, the undone vast. And then
this man had come and held the cup of
life enchantingly to her lips, the cup
that she must put from her because it
was unholy.

But again the man's voice was adjust
ing the balances, turning her little world
awry by its potent sorcery. And Miriam
sat on the judgment-seat, a dazed spec
tator at the drama of her life. " The
good that's in the world when the heart
is happy! It overflows, my dear, like
that little singing creek bringing plenty
to the ranch-lands below. I feel it in

The Prophetess ITT

my heart, all the generous promptings
that" — he laughed up at her boyishly —
" that I ain't had a bowin' acquaintance
with for years. Ah, my girl, the taste
of life had grown sour in my mouth
till I heard your voice that day on No-
Smoke, — the day I grinned, Miriam — do
you remember ?"

She remembered that, and every mo
ment he had been in her life from that
first evening. They were silent, the
shadows were growing longer, the magic
of that perfect day made the gift of
silent comradery an estimable estate.
No-Smoke had the quiescent delights of
the land of lotus.

And presently they could hear the old
man's quavering treble calling for Miri
am from below.

"Father is calling." She sprang up,
clutching at this forlorn hope of escape.
Jarvis caught and crushed her to him :

" To-morrow morning, at sunrise, I'll
have the horses ready."

She struggled for a moment, like a
frantic child, then was quiet.

" To-morrow morning, at sunrise," he
said, as one who impresses a lesson. And
she repeated the words after him like one
speaking in sleep.

No- Smoke will never forget that last

H2 Harper's Novelettes

prayer-meeting1. They all came but Jar-
vis, who pleaded that he had work to do,
and — with a shrug — that he had grown
a little tired of preaching petticoats; so
they had ridden away without him, while
the sun was yet an hour high, in all their
ruffianly picturesqueness of apparel —
spurs, sombreros, cartridge-belts, shaps,
and silk handkerchiefs whipping the
breeze, their faces as grave as if their
errand had been a lynching. Miriam
did not keep them long waiting. She had
been ready, though it was earlier by half
an hour than the time set for the service.
She looked neither to the right nor left
as she walked without a trace of self-
consciousness to the big uncovered wagon
that was to serve as a pulpit. The change
that had come over her in the last twenty-
four hours was startling. She was no
longer the young sibyl whose heart is
wrung that she must speak the sorrowful
words of human destiny; she was a wom
an who had drained the chalice of living
to its last dregs; a woman who looked
at them with a face like the worn bed
of a torrent. The golden quality of her
voice — a yearning note that sang beneath
its sweetness and would have been po
tent, to solace souls in the pit — had fled.
The prophetess in her had turned to dust

The Prophetess 113

and ashes. Her eyes were wide, as one
who walks in sleep, her face had the
pallor of death, her voice rang harsh in
bitterly accusing accents:

" For I have sold Thee, my Master, for a
paltrier thing than the thirty pieces, and
though my hands were red I went about
and made believe to do Thy work. Like
Judas I have wept till mine eyes are
blinded to Thy mercies, and no sound
comes to mine ears but the wailing of
the damned. Lift me up, O God, lest
the waters of despair close over me !"

Once, twice, she swayed; then fell for
ward. The unconsciousness was but mo
mentary, for again she faced them,
weak of body, but not infirm of will.
" Go, all of you, — you have no need of
my shepherding."

It was dark on the plain of No-Smoke.
The moon ploughed through a furrow of
blackness, then left the ungracious night
to its own dour mood. Very small and
futile seemed the temporary home-making
of the woman preacher on that stark,
lonely plain. The woman herself lay on
the piled bedquilts within the tent, and
from time to time the old man looked at
her with the helpless concern of a child.
They were quite alone. But presently
she began to turn restlessly and, in spite

ii4 Harper's Novelettes

of her father's protestations, to occupy
herself with domestic affairs.

" Are you mad ?" he called, angrily, to
her, when he saw that she had caught
the horses and was harnessing them to
the wagon. " Are you stark mad to try to
travel to-night, when you fainted, and ben
making a fool of yourself in the bargain ?"

" Dear father," she answered, with
loving forbearance, " God is leading us
away from this dreadful place. This
place of temptation. Only trust Him."
He watched her in silent wonder. But
a little while and she had been so
feeble, and now she moved and did as
if there had been magic in her veins.
And presently all was in readiness
for the exodus. It was the sick woman
who forced the initiative, who led the
protesting old man to the wagon, helped
him in, put her arms about him as one
would soothe an ailing child. The horses,
fresh from their week's grazing, tossed
their heads and sniffed the air in readi
ness for the journey. Eight iron-shod
hoofs struck sparks from the road as they
sped across the old snake trail, and
presently they came to the fork of the
road, and the lights of town flashed like
stars in the purple west. The upper fork
led to the solitary trail across the desert,

The Prophetess 115

across the great white plains of alkali.
The lower fork dipped toward the town
with its lights and human comradeship.
But without a moment's hesitation the
woman took the fork that led above the
town — and temptation. Her father had
dozed and wakened, and when, they were
well along the desert road and the lights
of town were far behind he asked,

" Isn't it very dark on the trail,
Miriam?"

" Very dark on the trail, father."

A Little Pioneer

BY PHILIP VEBRILL MIGHELS

ON the autumn day when Nick
McKey came driving the bi
monthly stage, full four days
late, into Poco del Oro mining-camp,
with a wee small child, hardly three years
of age, on the seat up top beside his dusty
knee, the trials, tribulations, and per
plexities of the insignificant community
were instantly augmented, — for the new-
come little pilgrim was a girl.

McKey approached the town in the
late afternoon, when the toilers were
nearly all come down from their hillside
mining-holes and the major portion of
the camp's inhabitants had focussed in
and about the grocery-post-office-saloon.

They took a quick, sharp look at
a sight such as never had been seen
in the camp before — the dusty Nick
with a dusty little blue-clad figure at his
side, as the four dusty horses and the
dusty coach came toiling up the final

A Little Pioneer 117

climb of the highway to halt at length
in their midst, And the tiny passenger
was as smiling and winning a bit of in
nocent, delighted femininity as any one
could desire.

" Well," said a voice, " I'll be damned!"

" Civilization !" yelled another. " Hur
ray f er McKey, a-fetchin' us civilization !"

" Whoa !" commanded the driver, kick
ing on his brake. " Shut up, you Grigg ;
you're scarin' the team. What's eatin'
you, man? This ain't nuthin' but that
there William Scott's little gal, come by
reg'lar express, accordin' to orders."

"Scott's little — Oh!" said a small,
bearded man at the wheel of the stage.
"Why, Nick, I'd clean forgot. He sent
to have her come, of course; he told me
all about it, Nick ; but, say — poor Scott ! —
he died a week ago, and natchelly you
knowed nothin' about it."

An inarticulate chorus of murmurs in
the crowd made the silence that followed
peculiarly intense.

"Dead?" repeated McKey at last.
" I've fetched her here, all alone in the
world, and the little gal's father is dead !
Scott? Then he wasn't as strong as
he looked."

" He was thin as a pick," imparted the
small man, speaking with suppressed emo-

nS Harper's Novelettes

firm. " It was pluck made him look kind
of strong1. . . . By gingerbread! Nick, I
wonder what we're goin' for to do?"

" 'Bout what ?" inquired a teamster.
" lie's buried, Tom, best we could on the
money. What more can we do ?"

" I was thinkin' of this here little ex
press passenger," answered Tom; "the
little gal, arrove here all alone."

Those of the men who were not already
gazing at the child on the seat above
their heads now directed their attention
to her unanimously. From such a broad
side of masculine glances as she now
found herself receiving the little thing
shrank a trifle against the arm of McKey,
whom she seemed to regard as an institu
tion of security and trust. Despite her
slight confusion, however, she smiled
upon every kindly-looking person in the
group. And what a wonderful bright-
brown pair of eyes they were from which
she smiled! — roguish, challenging, trust
ful, unafraid, and lustrous as jewels new
ly fashioned. Her two little chubby hands
were busily twisting the hem of her
dusty blue dress, her two chubby legs
were straight out before her, the worn
little shoes projecting over the edge of
the cushion. On her head she wore a
faded brown woollen hood, beneath

A Little Pioneer 119

the edge of which the brightest and
lightest old-gold curl of hair was pret
tily waiting to dance. Alone in the
mountains with all these men, she seem
ed as happy and as friendly as if her
one possible baby-wish had been granted
at once by the goddess of chance. That
she could not know of her losses and her
plight, could not comprehend the talk of
the men who blurted out the truth, was, as
a matter of fact, the one touch of mercy
so far vouchsafed her helpless babyhood.

"Kind of a bully little gal," ventured
one of the miners.

"Of course she's a bully little gal,"
replied the bearded Tom Devoe. " But,
Scott bein' gone — '

" That's it," interrupted the driver
from his seat. " Scott bein' gone, who's
a-goin' to take the kid and pay? There's
two hundred dollars express charges for
bringin' her in from that Utah camp, for
it's near three hundred miles of staging
and her sent forward by fast express, and
' handle with care ' told every driver, spe
cial. Did Scott leave the money, Tom,
for to pay the company's charges ?"

" lie didn't leave money enough to pay
for all we done to make the funeral look
like the genuine article," imparted Devoe.
" I don't know why he sent for the pore

120 Harper's Novelettes

little gal, except T guess there was noth-
in' else to do; and of course lie didn't
reckon on cashin' in his stack so sudden.
You see, he never had no luck, anyhow.
Him and his pretty young wife struck
out from down in Ohio, four years ago,
for to. emigrant acrost the plains and git
to the mines with a load of things to sell
and make a stake — and they jest about
had a hell of a time, accordin' to some
ways of thinkin'."

"Don't be swearin' before the little
gal," cautioned the driver, who had
" cussed " his team over forty miles of
mountain ruggedness. " Go kind of de
cent, — anyways for a starter. With a boy
kid everybody knows it's diff'rent. That's
all, Tom; go on with your rat-killin'."

" Scuse me," answered Tom. " Well,
as I was sayin', first Scott got sick,
then his wife was kind of ailiii', and
up and had a little gal baby out on the
plains. Then—"

"This here little gal?" interrupted
Grigg. " Little Civilization ?"

"Yep — same child. Then after that
they lost two horses in the fordin', and
some of their freight was burned at night
by Injuns, and some was traded off for
hny and grub, and a lot went to square
off the doctor when the baby come along,—

A Little Pioneer 121

and Scott said they'd V bin mighty glad
to trade it all for her; and it took them
near three years, after that, to git to a
camp in Utah, and that's where they quit
a-goin' for a while, till Scott got promise
of a job out here in the Poco d'Oro
mines, and — "

"Rottonest 'pology for mines I ever
see," interpolated a listener.

"Well, I don't know," answered Tom.
" Point is, Scott come on, leavin' his wife
and little gal behind, fer safety and fam'-
ly comfort, over to that Utah camp — and
it pretty soon no good to stay in, after
the strike at Thunder River; and then
he's gittin' news that Mrs. Scott was
sick, and later she was dead, and the
baby took by strangers. So Scott he sent
to have her come, and here she is."

" Yes — and two hundred dollars express
charges, c. o. d.," added McKey. "And
who's a-goin' to pungle up the same ?"

There were many " ahems " to break
an otherwise impressive silence.

" Well, I don't see how you can take
her back — no place to take her," ventured
Devoe. " Too pretty to take back, any
how. I'd hate to see you takin' the little
thing away," and he looked at the child
with a species of hunger in his eyes. " I
ain't jest got the money," Torn confessed.

9

122 Harper's Novelettes

" If there's anybody else — " and he looked
about in the knot of men, only to find the
attention of each one suddenly engrossed
with something personal.

Unfortunately, Poco del Oro had been
more or less of a false alarm. Its wealth
was still to be uncovered. Its first excite
ment had been dead a year, and many of
its early population had departed. There
was not a single family of man, wife,
and children in the place. There was
one good young woman remaining — Mis
tress Nancy Dunn, the daughter of Dunn
who hauled in wood from the habitable
world, — and she had said her nay to the
marriage proposal of nearly every man
in town. To little Tom Devoe she had
answered thus no less than thrice, on the
last occasion lending a species of em
phasis to her decision by dashing a
bucketful of water in her suitor's face,
— with water at ten cents a gallon.

Tom was reflectively dwelling on
Nancy's charms, despite his recent dis
couragements. He even saw new glim
merings of hope as he gazed fondly up
at Scott's little gal, smiling in coyness
down upon him.

"Well — Nick — if only I could borrow
the money, why, perhaps — " he faltered,
and again he left his sentence in the air.

A Little Pioneer 123

"Borry? Haw!" said a voice, and a
few men guffawed.

"What's her name?" inquired a spec
tator.

"Nancy," answered Tom, in his pass
ing abstraction.

" Haw !" repeated that raucous voice.

"We know 'bout that old game; but
I mean the little gal's," explained the
interrogator. " What's the little gal's
name ?"

" Her folks," said Devoe, " they named
her Prairie, fer where she was born.
She's a regular little pioneer; and I'd
hate to see her took away from here."

" Cash down, or return the shipment —
them's the orders on all the c. o. d.'s,"
observed the driver, once again. " I
ain't been drivin' long, perhaps, but I
know the rules — sometimes. So, Tom,
if you want to keep the little passenger —

"I'd like to see her stay, first rate,"
said Tom, whose hunger for children was
growing apace. " There's no place to
take her if you fetch her back. . . . Say,
Nick, couldn't you leave her on thirty
days' trial? Eegular thing for every ex
press to leave things on trial. You see,
you could leave little Prairie that way,
and after thirty days — why, either we'd
pay the two hundred, or — We'd know

i2.| Harper's Novelettes

more about things than we know jest now,
dead sure. You see, Nick, it ain't like
as if 'twas a boy. You never can tell
about gals. But you jest leave her with
me on thirty days' trial, for fun."

Nick scratched the back of his head.

" It sounds like it might be 'cordin' to
some of the rules I've heard," said he.
" I know I've heard 'bout sech an arrange
ment somewheres or other; but, Tom, I'd
have to ask Barney to ask ole Pete to ask
young Tomkins to ask the company's
agent, down to the end of Stetson's run."

"All right," Tom agreed. "You can
leave her with me on that understandin'."

The tiny passenger, sitting all this
while at the driver's side, was duly re
moved from the seat. She stuck like a
bur to McKey's dusty coat and had to
be taken off with care. Nevertheless, as
a bur will stick impartially to the very
next garment presenting an opportuni
ty, she adhered to the faded green of
Devoe's old vest with ready cheer and
friendliness, looking back at the driver
without a reproach from her newly ac
quired situation.

A subtle ecstasy spread throughout
Tom Devoe's being as he felt the warm
little burden on his arm; and away to his
little shack he trudged in triumph.

A Little Pioneer 125

The time for men to become solicitous
concerning the management of property
is the moment in which some other in
dividual acquires the property in ques
tion. There were six worthy citizens of
Poco del Oro whose growing anxiety
over the rearing of little Prairie Scott
became so acute, that very first evening
of the tiny girl's arrival, that a visit to
her newest home became absolutely im
perative. They moved on the cabin in
a body.

The shack was half a dugout, half
a structure, the front elevation being
fashioned of barrel - staves, cleverly
lapped and securely hammered to a frame
work of beams. It possessed a window
with a broken glass, and a solid maple
door, brought straight from New York by
way of San Francisco and the isthmus,
and sold to build a house around in any
known style of the art. A dim red light
was shown in the window as the men
came boldly to the place. Just at the
moment of their arrival a fearful din and
clatter within the cabin abruptly as
saulted the silence.

" There !" said the muffled voice of
Tom. " Ain't you busy ?"

The men went in. Little Prairie was
there. She had just succeeded in drag-

126 Harper's Novelettes

ging down a large collection of pots and
pans, all of them laden with rich, greasy
soot. For herself, she was generously
daubed with black from head to foot,
particularly as to hands and face.

Tom was looking at her helplessly. He
seemed relieved at beholding the number
and size of his visitors.

" Darn'dest little kid I ever saw," said
he. " She's burned up one of my boots
already, and spoiled my dress-up pants,
and broke my gun. Awful healthy little
kid — awful ambitious and willin'. . . .
But she sort of likes old Tom."

The little object of his summary ap
peared to comprehend that something was
due to Tom by way of establishing her
compensating virtues. She came towards
him enthusiastically and threw her arms
about his knees.

" Baby— yoves — ole — Tom," she an
nounced, in broken accents of sincerity.
" Baby — do — yove — ole — Tom."

Tom caught her up, and she clutched
his beard in both her sooty hands, arid
smiled in his eyes bewitchingly.

"It's lucky your house is pretty
strong," remarked one of the visiting
contingent. "I kin see you're goin' to
raise her up deestructive."

"You can't begin readiii' her nice

A Little Pioneer 127

gentle stories a minute too soon," add
ed another. "Have you got the Bun
ion's Progress, by a feller named Mr.
Christian?"

"Keadin'?" said the camp's profound-
est pessimist, scornfully. " What she
wants is work. Leave her chop the wood ;
that '11 gentle her down."

" Say ! do you think this child is anoth
er of them dead-from-workin' wives of
your'n?" demanded Devoe, indignantly.
"If you fellers came here to pesterfy
and try to run the show, why, you're jest
a mite too late, boys. Savvy? I reckon
this here cat-hop kind of elects me gen
eral sup'intendent."

Civilization Grigg was one of the
visitors. He stood there in rapture,
gazing on tlie child, his nature yearn
ing for a small caress.

"We only come to offer a few kind
and useful suggestions," he now ex
plained. " That's all."

"You can leave out the kind ones,"
Tom replied. " I never heard no ' kind '
suggestions yet that wasn't ground pretty
sharp on two or three edges."

" Biggest lot of cheek I ever see,"
grumbled the pessimist. "If it gits any
bigger it '11 crowd the mountains off
the camp."

128 Harper's Novelettes

" Well, don't you hang around and git
made uncomfortable when it happens,"
answered Devoe. "How about that, lit
tle honey?"

"Baby — do — yove — ole — Tom," the tot
repeated, smearing his neck with a sooty
essence of her growing affection as she
gave him an enviable hug.

Those of the men who had not dis
covered seats upon arriving now sat in
the bunk at the end of the room. Four
of the half-dozen visitors were desperate
ly seining their minds to net some small
remark that would sound as if they real
ly knew a baby from a grindstone.

"Well— 'hem!" said Billy Partridge,
the smallest man in town, — "the only
thing I thought of, Tom, was the climate.
Are you dead-certain sure this climate
is just exactly right to raise up a girl
youngster into?"

"Certain!" said Tom, with ready con
viction. " Climate is generally pretty
decent anywheres till it gits sort of
sp'iled by too many people cussin' at it,
night and day. But there ain't men or
wimmin enough in all Nevady yet to
swear this climate sour."

"I ain't seen a baby for so long, I
couldn't tell laughin' from cry-in'," con
fessed big Dan White. " I used to know

A Little Pioneer 129

how to hold one, Tom, and maybe I ain't
forgot." lie came towards little Prairie
tentatively. " Want to take an assay
of me?" he inquired, and he held forth
his arms invitingly.

The youngster looked at him gravely,
then snuggled coyly up to Tom and
smiled like a born coquette.

" Guess not," decided Dan ; but no
sooner were his arms again at his side
than Prairie made overtures to lure him
back. He took her, somewhat clumsily,
and yet with a knowledge of the business.
Then, when he had her, he knew not
what to say.

"You're doin' pretty fancy, Miss
Scott," he informed her presently, and
carried her over to the window.

Tom commenced to restore a sem
blance of order in the cabin.

"A woman ain't never so young she
can't raise hell in about two minutes,"
he observed, as a generalization, and
sagely he added, " That's one of the rea
sons we like 'em."

"Bad sign when a gal kid takes too
sudden to strangers," grumbled the pessi
mist. " When I was a child — "

" You never was no child," interrupted
Devoe. "You was born so old you was
already gittin' fermented."

130 Harper's Novelettes

Dan White had thought of another bit
of information to impart to little Prairie.

"Miss Scott, this weather is gen'ral
throughout the United States and Can-
ady," said he ; " raw, with westerly wind."

"Yes, and that reminds me, I've got
to cut up some wearin' apparel and make
her a warm woollen dress," said the
practical Tom, who thereupon produced
scissors, needles, thread, a sailmaker's
"palm," in lieu of a thimble, and the
faded magenta garment he had in his
mind to convert to brand-new usefulness.
"I long ago found out," he concluded,
" that charity often begins at the tail
of a shirt that's worn out higher up."

He now had White place the young
ster on the floor while he " sized her
up " for the dress that was to be. She
Started away, when the measuring was
finished, to make her fiftieth tour of
the cabin.

" Regular born prospector," Tom ob
served, as he watched her going. " Never
saw her equal in the world. Samples
everything in sight in about two bats of
your eye."

The small " pioneer " stumbled flat
across some obstruction on the floor, but
was not in the least disconcerted. She
stood on her head and feet for a mo-

A Little Pioneer 131

ment, regaining her perpendicular in
youngster fashion, and finding that one
of her shoes was holding down a soft,
dark something that she wanted, she stood
there solidly and pulled at the object
with all her sturdy might. It presently
tore, and so came up about her chubby
leg, her foot having cleaved through the
substance. Encased as it were in this
ring that would not release her knee, she
approached her foster-father laboriously.

"Tate it off," she requested. "Tom,
tate it off."

" What is it, then?" said the busy Tom.
" Why — it must be somebody's hat !"

The pessimist snatched it, somewhat
excitedly. " Mine — and plumb ruined
forever!" he said. "Stay here? me? —
in your shack, with such a child as
that? Not for a million in gold! A
terrible, devastatin' scourge!" and out of
the cabin, in anger, he went, and slammed
the door behind him.

But the others, when they finally de
parted from the shack, went forth with
a quieter spirit.

"You mark my word, the wonderful
men was all of ?em little," said Partridge.
"There was little old Bony Napoleon,
and now here's Tom Devoe."

No corner of the earth is so remote

132 Harper's Novelettes

that a man may forever escape a visit
from desperation. Even Tom Devoe was
receiving marked attentions from this
brother-in-fact of common worry.

It was not in the matter of sewing,
cooking, or amusing that Tom found his
resources lacking; it all lay in something
ascribable to things feminine that trou
bles seemed to hover over the cabin.
Tom had made the dress, and made it
well. He had a skill as fine as a woman's
with his scissors and his threads, and
he had the loving wish that prompts
domestic energy. He had made little
stockings and a "nightie," warm as
toast. He was making little leather
boots, already painted brilliant red, and
as crude in construction as they were
gaudy in decoration; and other things
he had in process of planning; neverthe
less there were family cares that baffled
his " motherly " possibilities.

For the fourth time he sought Miss
Nancy's presence. She had heard all
about the thirty-day trial of the child,
and the look on the face of her suitor
when he came was a sign she read with
ease. The " trial " was growing intense.

" You ain't been around to see the lit
tle pioneer," said he. "I kind of ex
pected you'd sort of float around."

A Little Pioneer 133

"I ain't lost no double-orphan chil
dren," said Nancy, "and they ain't no
great curiosity."

"They are when they've got a single
man for a father and mother," answered
Tom. "And she'd be a curiosity any
how, you bet! She's wonderful healthy
and willin'. You really ought to see her,
jest for fun."

" It's more fun guessin' what you come
here for to-night," she said, and her eyes
were snappily bright.

Tom wriggled on his chair uneasily.
He knew her guessing of old.

"Well, then— 'hem!" he faltered, col
oring yet more red beneath his florid
complexion, — "are you — goin' for to say
you'll up and do it, Nancy ? — hey ?"

" No, I ain't goin' to up and do it, nor
down and do it, neither," she told him,
with decision. " I told you so before."

"Yes, but this time you git a chance
to be a mother right from the jump," he
argued, soberly. " Ain't that something ?"

"No, it ain't. No second-hand moth
er for me," she said. "I reckon I'll be
the mother of my own bawlin' kids when
I start."

"She ain't a great one to cry," Tom
hastened to impart. "I'll guarantee to
git up nights and walk her if she cries.

134 Harper's Novelettes

Come on, INTancy, be a real nice gal
and say you will. Your father's per
fectly willin'."

"Didn't I say no?" she demanded.
" My father, hey ? Because he can't git
away with my little sack of money he'd
let me marry any decent man in camp,
and then sit down and wait to see if my
lovely husband could git those three hun
dred dollars. No, sir, I won't, I won't, I
won't, and that's where the story says
F-i-n-i-s — with the h left off every time.
So you might as well go home and forget
you came."

"If you'd seen the little gal you'd
answer different," said Devoe, persistent
ly. " Hadn't you better see her first?"

"I've seen her, don't you worry," an
swered Miss Dunn. " What do you think
I am? And don't I know that seven
days have gone already, and only twenty-
three more is left of your thirty, and you
thought you'd marry me and git my
money to pay them two hundred dollars,
c. o. d., at the end of the time? I said
I won't, and now you git, Tom Devoe,
for I ain't got time to hear you talk."

"All right,'r said Tom; "but you're
?way off your boundaries concernin' your
money. I never had no idea in the world
of askin' you to pay up the charges."

A Little Pioneer 135

This was the truth. He had well-
nigh forgotten that thirty-day condition
and the price still due for retaining lit
tle Prairie. He went away from Nancy's
with a large new collection of worries.

It was raining and blowing together
that night, but he seemed to be oblivious
of everything. A warm little stove in his
heart was glowing cheerily so soon as he
came to his house.

And inside the place big Dan White
had the baby on his knee.

" Miss Scott," he said, as Tom entered,
" this storm is gen'ral throughout the
United States and Canady."

The following week there was snow on
the ground, and little Miss Scott, not a
whit less busy for the chill, got lost for
an hour in the nearest drift, and nearly
froze her tiny feet. She developed a cold
and a croupy-sounding cough that fright
ened poor Tom half to death.

It was when that tiny cold was two
days old and Prairie was ill and listless
and weak, no longer blithesomely " dee-
structive," but needing such a tender love
and care as only a woman may bestow,
that Tom's desperation reached its cul
minating - point. He feared the little
pioneer was perhaps already dying; and

136 Harper's Novelettes

then the man was suddenly prepared for
any deed of daring.

" My poor little gal has got to have a
mother," he declared. " It ain't been
fair; it ain't been right; and now
it's gone too far. She's goin' to have
whatever there is in this here Poco
d'Oro camp, if it takes a gun to clinch
the point."

He strapped on a mighty revolver, full
of lead and dirty black powder, and
marched him straight to the home of
Nancy Dunn.

" We're goin' to git married — right
now," said he, " so, Nancy — put on your
duds."

Miss Dunn was tremendously amazed.
She was also a little alarmed.

" Why — you, Tom Dcvoe — you're
crazy!" she stammered. "Why, what do
you — mean ? You know I — said I would
n't, and—"

" Yep ! I know what you said," he
interrupted, drawing his gun with a
shaking hand, " but you're goin' to change
your mind, and change it quick. That
pore little motherless child, she's goin' to
have a woman for to love. She's goin'
to have some proper care. She's goin'
to have a decent show to live and grow
up proper — savvy that ? And you are the

A Little Pioneer 137

one decent girl in the camp, and you and
me is a-goin' to go and git married —
that's the game. You put on your hat,
or come along without, for we're goin'
right now to Justice Knapp."

Nancy had long been accustomed to
pistols, but never before had she seen
one in this awful threatening aspect, its
bullets so terribly obvious, its muzzle so
blankly centred on her face. She looked
at it nervously, then at the eyes behind
it — the two eyes grown desperate and
marked with signs of worry.

She feared the man more than the
weapon — and she feared those bullets hor
ribly. She put on her bonnet, shaking
in fright all the while. Her impulse
was to cry, but all her crying faculties
were shrinking down in terror. As one
no longer consulted by her own volition,
she went from the door.

" I ain't a-goin' to hold this gun on you
constant," Tom informed her, indulgent
ly, trembling himself, "but don't you
try no shenanigan, not for a minute!"

In silence they wended their way to
the home of the justice of the peace.
Briefly and promptly, despite Miss
Nancy's reluctance, the old - fashioned,
time-honored formula for making a unit
out of two warring individuals was pro-

138 Harper's Novelettes

nounced, after which, still awed and
paralyzed with fear, the new-made wife
was led quietly away.

Convoyed by her armed and sinister
husband, Nancy went with him quite to
his shack. But she took not so much
as a look at little Prairie, lying in a
blanket before the open fire, engrossed
as she was in watching Tom. No sooner
had he laid off his huge revolver than
she pounced upon it and threw it out of
the window, where it disappeared in a
drift of snow. Then ensued a brief,
sharp denouement, after which the door
was wrenched wildly open and out ran
the bride, leaving Tom, bewildered and
dazed, sitting on the floor, with just a
ragged piece of calico in his hand as a
souvenir of a quick divorce.

That night all the story was old in the
camp; and big Dan White, when he came
to Tom's, saw signs of resignation to a
life of single blessedness depicted large
upon the homely countenance of the
whilom groom.

" Have you heerd from Nancy this
evenin' ?" he said. " How was she at
last accounts?"

" Pursuin' the even terror of her
ways," said Tom, "jest about the same
as before."

A Little Pioneer 139

"Well," reflected Dan, "you can take
a horse to the crick, Tom, of course — "

" I know," said Tom ; " I know all about
that part which says you can't make him
drink — and, Dan, if the horse is a mare
— she'll prob'ly throw you down and run
away into the bargain."

Miss Prairie Scott was only half-way
her "healthy and willin' " little self,
after five long days of cold and fever and
masculine care, and Tom was attempting
to lighten her life with tales of her
" mother's " shocking conduct, when the
dark wing of fate was suddenly over the
cabin, obscuring all the light.

The bimonthly stage was once more in
town, and with it had come a harsh de
cree. The mighty express corporation
had forwarded a quick decision in the
case of Tom's small pioneer. The two
hundred dollars " charges " for her trans
portation as an express parcel must be
paid without another day's delay, or the
child must be immediately taken away
and delivered to the company's agent,
three hundred miles towards the east.

Devoe heard the " sentence " like one
in a trance. He had put off the thought
of the whole affair till his full thirty days
should be counted. He was dazed thus

140 Harper's Novelettes

to find himself obliged to face the crisis
prematurely. The driver now come was
a man unknown to Tom or any of his
friends. But, for that matter, friendship
could hardly have availed to alter the
company's attitude of relentlessness.

"I'll try to hustle the money," said
Devoe. "I couldn't let the baby go.
Why, man, she'd die. She couldn't make
a trip like that such weather as this, and
her jest pickin' up a little after bein'
pretty sick. I couldn't leave her go."

As a matter of fact, he was suddenly
sick throughout his entire system. It
was one worry more than he could readily
bear. His own little hoard contained ex
actly thirty-five dollars; and how many
friends could he count on here in this
poor little worked-out camp, where he
and others were hanging on from sheer
force of habit and hope ?

He thought of defiance, of thrusting a
pistol in the driver's face and bidding
him run for his life. He thought of
flight, with the child in his arms, across
the hills to a western town. The huge
barrier of mountains, now white with
snow and chill with icy blasts, rose be
fore him, silent, forbidding.

Of all the six worthy citizens who had
taken an interest sufficient to cause them

A Little Pioneer 141

to visit the small pioneer, there were only
four who could lend assistance in raising
a fund to defray those appalling charges.
Civilization Grigg, who builded with
mud, had fifteen dollars in all the world.
He gave the entire sum. Billy Partridge
could spare but an even five. The pessi
mist, masking his feeling behind a growl,
came along with eight silver dollars; and
big Dan White gave all he would have
for a month, and it counted twenty-two.
The total amount in the fund was eighty-
five dollars. It lacked just one hundred
and fifteen dollars of being sufficient —
and resources thoroughly exhausted.

Tom, Dan, Partridge — even the pessi
mist — all the worried clan spent the re
mainder of the day attempting to bribe
the driver to take their all and leave
the child in camp. He was harder than
iron, in a quiet, decent way of unanswer
able logic that left the group at the cabin
baffled and hopeless.

"I'll come here and git her in the
morning," he said, and the long, cold
night descended on the camp.

The morning came, and with it no so
lution. Out of a flawless sky the sun
was shining on a world of mountains
dazzling white in the snow. The wheels
of the swiftly approaching stage made

142 Harper's Novelettes

creaking notes as crisp as those of a
violin. The men inside the cabin heard
the sound with dread.

Out in his shirt-sleeves went Devoe,
his eyes dull red from sleeplessness. Be
side him stood his friends.

"Shaw," he said to the driver, "the
little gal's inside the shack — and that's
where she ought to be left, or God Al
mighty's made a big mistake. God Al
mighty, I say. He gave this little kid
to me, as sure as He ever done anything
good on earth. He knowed she didn't
have a decent friend in all this country,
and He gave her to me to care for. You
couldn't take her off, and maybe see her
die; you ain't got the heart for to do it.
Here's all the money we kin raise — it's
eighty-five dollars, and nearly half the
charges. Take that and ask the company
if they can't let off a little kid for less
than the whole two hundred. If she
hadn't come by express, the stage fare
wouldn't 'a' bin more than fifty dollars."

" Devoe," replied the driver, " don't
talk this all over again. I hate to tell
you no a thousand times. And I've got
to make a start."

Tom looked weak and pale. His mind
refused to conjure up another word of
argument.

A Little Pioneer 143

" She'll have to be wrapped real warm,"
he said, and as one hard hit and no longer
able to think or resist he turned towards
the house.

The pessimist growled at the driver in
accents of biting sarcasm as vain as they
were unique.

When Tom came out of the house,
with the child on his arm, she was lov
ingly patting his cheek.

" Baby — do — yove — ole — Tom," she
said, in her honest little coo.

The man's knees nearly gave way be
neath him.

" I can't let her go — I can't give her
up," he said to them all. "Boys — I'm
goin' to pay my. fare and go along. I'll
work for her hard — I'll work off the
charges — I'll git her all for my own — and
some day maybe we'll come back. I'll —

He paused, and the baby lifted her
pretty little head to listen to something
in the passing breath of frost. It came
from the rear of the cabin, a brisk creak,
creak on the snow.

Then suddenly, running in breathless
haste, from around the corner of the
shack came Nancy Dunn, her hair brown-
ly flying in the crystal air, her eyes ablaze
with eagerness.

"Here," she panted at the driver —

144 Harper's Novelettes

"here's your two hundred dollars — here
it is! Take it — take it — you can't — you
can't have — the baby !"

For a moment there was absolute
silence.

" Well — now — how's this ?" inquired
the startled driver. " Who are you ?"

"I'm Tom's— I'm Mrs. Devoe," she
said. " I'm his wife — and I've just come
home." Her cheeks unfurled a rich and
wholesome damask blush that made her
positively handsome. She turned to Tom
and took little Prairie in her arms.

When he got his chance, big Dan
White held the baby again on his knee.
"Miss Scott," he said, "this sunshine is
gen'ral throughout the United States
and Canady."

Back to Indiana,

BY ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE

THE rising sun had not yet drunk
the dew from the grass in the door-
yard of the lone cabin when the
man mounted the forward hub of the
prairie-schooner and bent a final glance
into the dusky interior to make sure that
nothing had been forgotten. He inven
toried the contents with his eye: a mat
tress for his wife, baby boy, and little
Nellie to sleep on; blankets and com
forters — somewhat faded and ragged — for
himself and Roy to make a bunk of, on
the ground; a box of extra clothing,
cooking utensils, lantern, rope, shotgun,
family Bible — badly shattered, — and a
hen-coop, containing seven pullets, lash
ed to the end-gate. A wooden bucket
hung from the rear axletree, to which
was also chained a black and white setter.
The only superfluous article seemed to be
a little mahogany bureau, battered and
warped, but still retaining an air of dis-

146 Harper's Novelettes

tinction which set it apart from the other
tawdry furnishings, and marked it as a
family treasure.

Daggett stepped to the ground again,
and, folding his arms, swept his dull,
faded eyes over the limitless savanna,
still gray with the mists of night. Here,
for five weary, heart-breaking years, he
had pitted his puny arm against rebel
lious Nature and fought the elements on
their chosen ground. He had been eaten
up by grasshoppers; tossed by cyclones;
alternately scorched by strange, hot
winds and frozen by shrieking blizzards;
desiccated by droughts and flooded by
cloudbursts. His horses and cattle had
sickened and died; his wife had faded
and grown old in a day; one of his chil
dren had been laid under the tough,
matted sod which almost turned the edge
of a plough; and he, never rich, had
grown poorer and poorer. It was not
strange, perhaps, that he had come to
look upon that vast, treeless expanse, the
playground of elemental passions, as a
monster lying in wait for his blood.

" The curse of God upon you, I hate
you !" he burst out, with the sudden fury
which the elements had taught him. But
a better mood instantly following, his
eyes softened with a light to which they

Back to Indiana 147

had long been strange. "Back to God's
country — back to Indiana !" he exclaimed,
and laughed aloud.

Roy, his nine-year-old boy, looked up
at the unusual sound; but his father had
plunged into the dismantled cabin again.
He returned with a can of green paint
in his hand, and had soon roughly let
tered the canvas wagon-top with the in
spired words, on one side, "Back to
God's Country"; on the other, "Back
to Indiana." Then hurling the can of
paint out into the sunburnt grass with
all his strength, he cried, gayly, " There,
grasshoppers, eat that — you fiddlin' de
mons that air so fond of green, stuff!"

A stooped, flat -breasted woman, but
with the remnants of beauty still cling
ing to her thin, pale face, came around
the corner of the house. She, too, had
been taking a last look about. A black
cat alternately trotted in front of her
and arched its back across her skirts.

" Rufus, I feel as if we ought to take
the cat," said she, hesitatingly. " I hate
to leave any living thing here"

" Throw him in ! Always room for one
more!" cried her husband, jovially.

She glanced up gratefully at his unex
pected good-nature, and then took a final,
solicitous look about her. Just as the

148 Harper's Novelettes

prospect of quick wealth had not intoxi
cated her, as it had her husband, when
they sold out in Indiana and started
West, so the reverses they had since suf
fered had not sullened and hardened her.
Likewise, though this home-going1 was
filling her depleted veins with new life,
she could not bubble over as Rufus and
the children did. Instead, she wet her
pillow with softly flowing, peaceful
tears, in the stillness of the night.

" Now I must go over to Willie's
grave," said she, quietly. It was plain
that this duty had been reserved for
the last.

She did not ask her husband to go with
her, and he did not volunteer to go. But
he watched her with chastened eyes as
she crossed the field to the slight rise
which, for want of a better name, they
had always called " the hill." The little
grave was already covered with a tangle
of wild roses, trumpet-vine, and prairie-
grass; the headboard was gray and
weather-beaten, and the rudely carved
name half obliterated. Nature was claim
ing her own. A few summers and win
ters would come and go, with their beat
ing rains and merciless freezes; and then
there would be nothing, not even a little
mound, to mark the spot where Willie,

Back to Indiana 149

after spinning his brief thread of life,
had been laid away. Scalding; tears ran
down the mother's cheeks at the thought.

"I wish it was so we could take him
up and lay him with the others, back
home," said she, gently, on her return.

"We'll do it sometime, mother,"
promised Daggett, hopefully. But she
knew they never would do it; they would
always be too poor.

Owing to the hard times, they had
been unable to sell their farm. So they
had left it in the hands of a real-estate
agent, twenty miles away, who would
probably fleece them out of half their
dues if he ever sold the place. Their
scanty furniture had brought but a pit
tance, and had it not been for a lucky
sale of cattle they might have been un
able to get away for another year. As
it was, they expected to reach Indiana
with practically nothing but the wagon
and the span of mules which drew it.
But what of that ! They would be among
friends; they would be in God's country
— in old Indiana, where they had been
born and raised.

So, buoyed up by hope, that divinest of
gifts from above, they were happy. At
night they camped by the roadside,
tethered the mules, built a fire, and

150 Harper's Novelettes

cooked supper. How sweet the smoky
bacon, the johnny-cake smutted with
ashes, and the black, creamless coffee
tasted! No king ever sat down to more
royal fare. Then, after a brief season
of talk, and a pipe for Daggett, they lay
down and slept in the untainted air of
God's great out-of-doors. In the morn
ing they arose with renewed life, fed the
mules, cooked breakfast, and began an
other day's lap on their long journey.

Often the road was hot and dusty,
between flat, barren fields. But often,
again, it skirted beautiful streams for
miles; and after they reached the Ozarks,
it wandered through pleasant valleys,
forded swift brooks, and climbed cool
mountain-sides, in the shade of thick
timber. Farmhouses, villages, and cities
were sighted, passed, and left behind, in
a slow, pleasing panorama. Beyond the
Ozarks they began to see birds that they
had known back in Indiana ; and at sight
of the first cardinal, with his breast
flaming in the sunlight, Daggett stared
with fascinated eyes for a moment, and
then burst out: "Look at the redbird,
mother! He's just like the one that used
to build in our syringa-bush !" Lucy
could not remember that he had ever
called her attention to a bird before.

Back to Indiana 151

The blacK cat 'deserted them the first
night out, going back home, presumably.
But no ill luck ensued, as Daggett half
feared it would. Not so much as a nut
was lost or a strap broken. Mrs. Daggett
continued to improve; the children,
though as brown as Malays from dust
and tan, had no ache or pain; and Dag
gett himself forgot to take a dyspepsia
tablet for a week.

Yet their bed was not quite one of
roses. Thoughts of the future, even in
" God's country," occasionally touched
the parents with anxiety. Also, in some
places, where their dark coats of tan
branded them as gipsies, they were look
ed upon with suspicion. Occasionally a
village constable, puffed up with authori
ty, would order them not to camp within
the village limits; and sometimes a
farmer, attracted by their evening fire,
would warn them not to trespass for
wood. Again, when the unshorn and
grimy Daggett entered a store to pur
chase groceries or a bale of hay — oc
casionally the roadside pasture failed — •
he was now and then made to feel that
his room was preferred to his trade. Yet
generally they wero treated with hu
manity; and not infrequently a farmer,
seeing the children at play of an evening,

152 Harper's Novelettes

would bring out milk or eggs or even a
chicken to the camp.

Daggett and his wife usually sat
around the fire of a night, after the chil
dren had gone to bed, and talked over
their prospects. Her heart, like his, was
set on getting back the old place, where
four of their children had been born
and two of them buried. It was only a
poor little place of eighty acres, just be
yond the fertile belt of Wabash bottom
land; but it was home, sweet home, and
looking back to it from their exile they
forgot its scanty crops and rocky soil.

" If we can't get it back, Rufus, it
won't be like going home," said Lucy,
one night, gazing into the fire with misty
eyes. They were then in Missouri, in the
eastern foot-hills of the Ozarks.

" We'll git it back, mother," said Dag
gett, confidently. His courage ran high
these days. " Joinville Haines probably
holds it yet, 'cause it ain't likely any
body would want to buy it. Leastways,
they didn't seem to want to when we had
it to sell. He's a good man. He ain't
forgot the time I pulled him out of the
crick and saved his life, when we was
boys. And I reckon he ain't forgot,
either, that he loved you once, Lucy,"
he added.

Back to Indiana 153

She did riot answer at once, but her
face grew softer. The remnant of its
girlish beauty, which child-bearing,
drudgery, and ill health had so sadly
ravished, showed to better advantage in
the soft firelight than in the glare of day.

"Maybe he has forgotten,'' she mur
mured. "I once feared that he was a
man who might forget such things."

Daggett pushed a log farther into the
fire with his boot, sending up a shower
of sparks, and relit his pipe with a coal.

"Is that the reason you didn't marry
him?" he asked, slyly.

She lifted her eyes to his. "I loved
you, Kufus," said she, quietly, and smiled
almost as she used to smile in the days
when he had courted her.

A tenderness which had long lain dor
mant stirred in Daggett's bosom. In the
past weeks he had realized as never be
fore the hard life he had led her. He
had not provided for her as Joinville
Haines would have done. He had com
plained of his lot, and he had often been
cross with her. To marry him she had
left a home in which, humble though it
was, she had never known privation. She
had slaved in his kitchen and about his
house. She had borne his children,
cheerfully, and with only welcome in

154 Harper's Novelettes

her heart for them as they came along, in
a rapid succession under which she had
withered like a flower. She had bravely
seen three of them lowered in the grave.
She had met his fault-finding with the
soft answer which turneth away wrath.

She had followed him into the West
against her better judgment. For five
years she had stood by his side out there,
ten miles from a neighbor, twenty from
a town, and forty from a railroad. She
had cheered him on while he fought
grasshoppers, hot winds, drought, bliz
zards, and his own sinking courage.
Never once had she suggested going back
to Indiana, though he could see that her
strength was failing and her heart break
ing. And when at last he had given up,
bitter and defeated, she had smoothed
the wrinkles from his brow, and put
hope in his heart, and raised the rally-
cry: "Back to God's country! Back
to Indiana!"

" Joinville will let us have the old
place back," he repeated. " He ain't got
any use for it. He knows I'll pay as I
can, and he'll give me time."

" It was such a warm little house, there
in the hollow," said she, huskily, con
trasting it with the boxlike shell on the
prairie, where the northwest gales, tooth-

Back to Indiana 155

ed with arctic cold, ravened like a wolf
at every crevice for days at a time. " The
kitchen was so cozy, too. I used to com
plain that it was too small, and un
handy. But I never will again — if we
get it back."

Daggett's eyes glistened like a boy's.
"I wonder if the honeysuckle-vine is
still on the well-house. I ain't smelt
honeysuckle since we left there."

She smiled at him through sudden
tears. "Rufus, I used to think, out on
the prairie, when I was so tired all the
time, that I'd be content to die, if only
the children could be provided for, and
I knew that some one would put a
sprig of honeysuckle in my hands after
I was dead."

When he helped her into the wagon,
where she slept, he retained her hand for
a moment, in a half-embarrassed way.
Then he kissed her. He could not recall'
when he had kissed her good-night be
fore. Nor could she, as she lay with
wide-open, happy, starry eyes.

He arose the next morning with a
heart strangely, blissfully light. Some
thing was moulding the old topsyturvy,
sordid world over for him again, giving
it somewhat the likeness it had borne
when he was a boy. As he and Roy

156 Harper's Novelettes

rode along on the front seat, he said to
the lad,

"Koy, do you remember the old
place?"

" Yes," answered the hoy, eagerly. " I
remember the crick, with the bridge
acrost it — and the little grove of spruce-
trees, with the two tombstones — and
the old barn with a basement — and a
well with a chain and a bucket on
each end."

" And the sweetest water in. it, Hoy,
that man ever drunk!" added the father,
jubilantly. " I ain't had my thirst right
ly quenched since I left it. The first
thing you and me '11 do when we drive
in is to git a drink of that water — and
then bring a gourdful to mother. Eh!"
He laughed gayly, and clucked to the
mules. " Git ep, boys, git ep ! Every
step is takin' you nearer to that sweet
water, and you kin have some too."
Once he would have sullenly struck the
animals when they lagged.

At a town called Bonneterre, in Mis
souri, which they passed through about
five o'clock in the afternoon, Uncle
Tom's Cabin was advertised on the bill
boards for that night.

"Mother," said Daggett, with an in
spiration, "I've a notion to camp on the

Back to Indiana 157

aidge of town, and take Roy and Nellie
to see Uncle Tom. It's a grand show
— I seen it once — and they ain't never
seen a show in all their lives. It won't
cost much."

The mother made no objection. So
after supper Daggett and the two chil
dren set out for the " Opera-house,"
leaving Mrs. Daggett, four - year - old
Bobbie, and Spot, the setter, in charge of
the camp. It was a memorable night for
the youngsters; and when Eliza fled
across the floating ice in the Ohio, with
her child in her arms, Roy, forgetting
that it was only a play, leaped to his feet
and shouted shrilly, " Oh, paw, them
hounds are goin' to git her !"

But on the way home, in the midst of
the excited babble of the children, Dag
gett suddenly paused under a street lamp,
and looked down at the diminutive pair
with a sickly color overspreading his
face. His pocketbook was gone! And
it contained all the money he had in the
world, except the change remaining from
a five-dollar bill which he had broken at
the box-office!

A search both along the street and in
the opera-house was of no avail, and it
was a heavy-hearted man who stretched
himself that night beneath the prairie-

158 Harper's Novelettes

schooner. There was no joking or sky
larking the next morning as they hitched
up the mules — no response to the birds'
tuneful sunrise greetings. They were
still two hundred and fifty miles from
home; the last of the flour had been used
for supper, and the side of bacon was
almost gone.

The alternative which faced Daggett
was to work, beg, or steal. His honesty
was of a fibre which would not permit
the last, and his rough pride balked at
the second. Therefore he must work.
But work was not an easy thing for a
nomad like him to get; and if he did
get it, it would take him some time, per
haps until cold weather, with a family
and a pair of mules on his hands, to
accumulate enough to last him through
to Indiana. The outlook was desperate
indeed.

That day their dinner consisted of
stale bread — a baker had let Daggett
have three loaves for a nickel — and dan
delion greens boiled with the last of the
bacon. Supper consisted of the same,
warmed over; and little Bobbie went to
bed crying for something to eat. Dag
gett swore, with a mighty oath, that the
child should have it in the morning, cost
what it might.

Back to Indiana 159

Two days later they crossed the Mis
sissippi at St. Louis, on .the great Eads
bridge. Daggett and his wife had look
ed forward impatiently to the passage of
this last great natural barrier between
them and home, and the occasion was to
have been one of thanksgiving. But the
bridge toll made a cruel hole in the
rapidly dwindling little store of silver in
Daggett's pocket; and though the chil
dren were jubilant over the steamboats,
and craned their necks to the last to see
them, the parents scarcely glanced at
the Father of Waters. That night Dag
gett announced to his wife that he had
just a dollar and twenty cents left.

" Something will turn up, husband,"
said she, bravely, but her lips trembled.

" What kin turn up ?" asked he, pa
thetically, and she could not make
answer.

They took the old St. Louis and Vin-
cennes stage-road, running due east.
Daggett mournfully recalled the exu
berance with which he had passed over
it five years before, going west. The
second day out from St. Louis, while
watering their team at a public pump,
in a village whose name they did not
know nor care to ask, the usual curious
group gathered about them.

160 Harper's Novelettes

"Want to sell that bird-dog, mister?"
inquired a bystander, who had been
noting Spot's points with a critical eye.

Daggett suddenly stopped pumping.
He had thought of selling his mules and
buying a pair of bullocks. He had
thought of selling his wagon and buying
a cheaper one. lie had even thought of
selling the box of clothing. But until
this instant his dog, blooded though he
was, had no more occurred to him as an
asset than one of his children had. Yet
why not sell him ? Better sell a dog than
starve a child. With grim lips he stepped
over to the inquirer, so as to get out of
ear-shot of the wagon.

"I'll sell him if I kin git his price,"
said he, almost fiercely. " But it's one
that you wouldn't care to pay, I reckon,
without tryin' him, and this ain't the
season for birds."

"What is your price?" asked the
other, as Spot approached his master and
looked up inquiringly with his soft,
brown eyes. " lie's got a good head."

" Twenty-five dollars," answered Dag-
gett, resolutely.

" You don't want much !" grinned the
prospective buyer.

" No, not much — for a dog like that,"
retorted Daggett,

Back to Indiana 161

"I like his looks," admitted the man.
"He shows his hreedin' all right. But
all the evidence I've got of his trainin' is
your word."

" That's all the evidence you've got or
kin git," assented Daggett, coolly. " And
it don't make a picayune's worth of dif
ference to me whether you take it or
leave it."

His bluster was working, as he per
ceived from beneath his drooping lids,
and the other hesitated.

" If you'd asked me five dollars for
that dog, pardner, I'd have refused him.
I'd 'a' knowed he was a spoiled pup."
He took another whiff at his pipe. " I've
been tryin' for three years to get a dog
just like that one. He grows on me
every minute, and — I'll take him at your
price," he ended, abruptly.

" Come into this store," said Daggett,
in a low voice. The dog followed. " My
wife and children mustn't see you take
him. They'd squall their eyes out. I'm
sellin' him, my friend, because I've got
to — because I need the money. You see!
Otherwise your common council could
n't raise enough to buy him. Tie a
string around his neck — he's as gentle
as a lamb — call him Spot, and, after
we're out of sight, lead him home and

162 Harpers Novelettes

feed him. And, my friend, treat him
good, lie's the best bird-dog you ever
shot over."

The man wrote out a check, which the
grocer cashed. Daggett pocketed the
money, patted the dog on the head, and
turned guiltily away from the beseech
ing brown eyes.

The children, lying inside the canvas,
out of the hot sun, did not miss their
four-footed playfellow until supper-time.
Then Daggett confessed, and bowed his
head before the storm of grief that
burst. It was only after the young
ones had sobbed themselves to sleep
that Mrs. Daggett said, sympathetically,
" I reckon it hurt you more than it
did them, Kufus."

The next day they had butter on their
bread again, but it had been purchased
at too heavy an outlay of the heart's
coin to be enjoyable ; and when little
Eobbie said with a whimper, " I'd
thooner have Spot than butter," ho
voiced the family's sentiments.

But even the sacrifice of their pet
could not long keep their spirits down,
now that home was drawing near and
they had the wherewithal to keep on
going. The towns they passed through
were becoming familiar to Daggett, by

Back to Indiana 163

name at least, and looked like Indiana
towns, he fancied. As the wagon
rumbled across the muddy Little Wa-
bash, with its pond - lilies and willow
thickets, Daggett cried out, boyishly:
"By jings! it's a picture on a small
scale of the old 'Bash herself; and I'll
bet a cooky that if I had a hook and
line I could ketch a catfish down there
in three minutes!"

But when he crossed the Wabash it
self, two days later, his emotions were
too deep for frivolous expression. In
that stream was water from Beecher's
Kun, and Beecher's Kun crossed his old
farm! How well he understood the
silent tears which were coursing down
Lucy's cheeks! And, oh, the rustle of
that bottom-land corn! It came to his
ears like some forgotten lullaby of child
hood ; and when a wood - pewee called
pensively from a sycamore, the man lift
ed an illuminated face toward the little
embodied voice and murmured, " God's
country — old Indiana — at last !"

The prairie-schooner creaked into
Emerald Grove after dark on a moon
light night. In their anxiety to reach
the town they had decided not to halt
for supper at the usual hour, Daggett

1 64 Harper's Novelettes

promising the children if they would
wait that they should eat in a restaurant.
They were now jubilant over this novel
prospect. But the parents were quiet.
The realization of their dream was too
near at hand. Their old home lay but
three miles away!

Emerald Grove! It was here that
Lucy had bought her wedding-gown, and
here that Daggett had bought his wed
ding suit. It was here that their childish
eyes had first grown round with wonder
at sight of a store, street-lamps, and a
telephone. It was the promise of a trip
to this town, on Saturday afternoon, that
used to hold them faithful to their chores
all week long. It was here the old doctor
lived who had ushered them and their
children into the world.

The town looked natural; but Daggett
was surprised, and a little disappointed,
at the number of new houses which had
gone up. In his heart he was jealous of
any change which had taken place in his
absence. He wanted to come back to the
Emerald Grove that he had left— a som
nolent old town whose population had been
at a standstill for a quarter of a century.

There were a number of new stores,
too; and the restaurant to which Dag
gett took the family for supper had

Back to Indiana 165

been improved and enlarged until he
hardly recognized the place. It had also
changed hands, so that he was denied the
pleasure of shaking hands with Elihu
James, the former proprietor. As he ate
he watched the door for a familiar face,
which he was hungrier for than the viands
on his plate ; but he could recall the name
of none of the men who dropped in for a
cigar. Emerald Grove had changed!

After supper they drove around to
Joinville Haines's house. At least one
of the hearts in the wagon fluttered as
Daggett passed up the flower-bordered,
brick walk to the old-fashioned dwelling.
So much depended on Joinville Haines
and his loyalty to an old friend! Then,
in an ominously short time, Lucy heard
her husband coming down the walk
again. Trouble was in his footfalls.

" Joinville don't live here no more,"
said he, in a puzzled manner. " He's
gone and built him a new house, the
woman said. Don't it beat you that
he would give the old family home
the shake?"

His tone was almost an aggrieved one.
During the weeks on the road he had so
often stood, in imagination, on the steps
of this house, and seen Joinville Haines
open the door and start at the apparition

1 66 Harper's Novelettes

of his old friend. Therefore, a strange
woman answering his ring had stunned
him. But this shock was small com
pared with the one he received when, fol
lowing the woman's directions, he drove
to a plot of ground that used to be rank
with dog- fennel and jimson - weed and
found a great, three-storied, granite man
sion, with plate-glass windows, statuary
in the yard, and a gravelled driveway
and porte-cochere, all jealously guarded
by an aristocratic ten-foot iron fence.

"This — this can't be Joinville's,
Lucy!" he faltered.

But it was, so a white-capped maid
informed him at the massive front door.
Mr. Haines was not at home, she added,
and would not be until the following day.
Would he leave his card ? Daggett shook
his head and retreated in confusion. His
card ! He had never owned a card in his
life, and the Joinville Haines he used
to know never had, either.

" If we've got to camp again to-night,
Kufus, let's drive out by the old place,"
pleaded Lucy, timidly. This great house,
somehow, had frightened her. " I feel
as if I'd sleep better out there. And I
can't wait any longer to see it."

They were soon on the old familiar
road, over which Daggett had hauled so

Back to Indiana 167

many wagon-loads of corn and hogs and
apples. They passed the long row of
Lombardy poplars in front of Newton
Bryson's, and crossed first Haymeadow
Creek and then Possum Fork. From a
distance they recognized in the moon
light the thicket of " silver maples " that
had sprung from the roots of the two
hoary old trees in Si Morgan's front
yard. Then came Dick Helm's, Luciaii
Smith's, Nimrod Binney's, and all the
other old neighbors. No change here,
and it was not long before the scent of
new-mown hay, still lying in windrows,
and the notes of the whippoorwills had
smoothed away the disappointments and
alarms of Emerald Grove.

Finally they rumbled across the little
bridge over Beecher's Run — still patched
with the plank that Daggett had placed
there with his own hands. From the
summit of the rise just beyond, their
old home would lie in full view — the
house, the barn, the well-house, and, if
the moonlight were bright enough, the
clump of spruces under which two little
white stones stood at the head of two
little graves.

Daggett halted the mules at the foot
of the slope.

" Let's camp here to-night, Lucy," said

168 Harper's Novelettes

he, in a voice which sounded strange in
his own ears. " We couldn't see much
to-night, anyhow. And I'd sooner see
it first by daylight. It'll look more
natural."

So they camped there that night —
camped, but did not sleep. All night
long the woman lay in the wagon, lis
tening to the frogs, and looking at the
stars in the west — that west out of
which they had fled as the children of
Israel fled out of Egypt. And all night
long the man under the wagon, out of
the dew, lay with open eyes; and he too
looked at the stars.

For some reason — the natural reaction
following his high-strung anticipations,
or the changes in Emerald Grove — he
was uneasy. And though the little frogs
trilled and the crickets chirped just as
they always used to do, something seem
ed to be amiss with the old nocturnal
quietude of the place. All through the
night there came to him, he fancied, a
low, distant, regular, mysterious sound
which he was at a loss to explain. When
he rose to his elbow and listened, it
seemed to cease; and he finally persuaded
himself that it was only a ringing in
his ears from indigestion. lie had eaten
a pretty hearty supper.

Back to Indiana 169

The elders were up at the gray of
dawn, while the children still slept; but
it was not until the sun had fairly risen
that they proceeded slowly up the little
rise of ground. Lucy reached out and
took her husband's hand. He felt her
trembling; and there flashed before him
a day in their childhood when both of
them, barefooted, had tramped up this
selfsame little hill. She was trembling
then, too, for she had seen a snake in the
blackberry bushes.

They reached the top of the rise, and
lifted their eyes. Both suddenly grew
rigid. Then Lucy gave a little cry.
Daggett stared vacantly ahead.

There was no farm! There was no
cottage — no barn — no vine - clad well-
house ! All had been swept from the face
of the earth as if by the besom of destruc
tion. In their place were long, low, ugly
brick buildings, with tin roofs; great
tanks; tall towers of structural steel; a
huge brick chimney, from which jetty
smoke rolled forth; several rows of new
ly painted laborers' quarters; a railroad
track and cars.

"Oil!" broke out Daggett, hoarsely,
at last. "They've struck oil!"

Lucy, swaying dizzily, grasped his arm
for support.

170 Harper's Novelettes

"Where's the little graveyard?" she
whispered.

"I — I can't jest make out, I'm so
turned around," he answered.

But he was not turned around to that
extent. He had seen at the first glance
that the ugly boiler-house, with the
smoky cloud clustering about its tall
stack like some foul fungus, squatted
squarely over the little God's-acre in
which the dust of their dead ones lay. It
gave him a feeling of suffocation.

As they stood in stunned silence, a
carriage drawn by two spirited black
horses, whose buckles glittered in the
sunlight, rapidly approached. On the
rear seat, behind a liveried coachman, sat
Joinville Haines — a millionaire, but up
and at work while most of his hired men
still slept in the quarters below. In
spite of his great house in Emerald
Grove, and in spite of his fine equipage,
he had changed little. He wore the same
plain, ill-fitting clothes he had always
worn, and beneath his squarely trimmed
beard his shirt-front showed innocent
of any cravat. He was only a little old
er, a little sadder, with deeper lines about
his mouth.

At sight of the wayfarers, who, in
their crushed mood, would have let him

Back to Indiana 171

pass unhailed, he ordered the driver
to stop.

"How do, Eufus! How do, Lucy!"
said he, with his old quiet cordiality.
He stepped down and held out his hand
to each, after a characteristic motion
which reminded Lucy of the days when
he used to run a meat-market and al
ways wiped his hand on his apron before
offering it to any one. " When'd you
git back?"

" Last night," answered Daggett. " We
camped yander. We just come up to see
the old place."

"Hadn't you heard?"

Daggett shook his head. A peculiar
light, akin to pity, flamed up in the rich
man's eyes, and then died away.

"You find consid'able change, then."

" Joinville, we wanted to buy the old
place back!" cried Lucy, swiftly.

Again that peculiar light in his eyes.

" Well, I guess you don't want it
now, after I've sp'iled it for you. You
wouldn't, leastways, if you'd had as much
trouble with it as I have." He jerked
his head toward his liveried coachman.
"My wife makes me ride behind that
monkey in red top-boots," he added, in a
lowered voice. " But, Kufus, if you want
a farm, I've got a hundred acres two

172 Harper's Novelettes

miles down the road — the old Barnum
place. It's better land than this ever
was, and you can have it on easy terms."

"How much down?" asked Daggett,
with a harsh laugh. He seemed to be
joking, in a ghastly way.

"Whatever you can pay," answered
the millionaire, steadily.

Daggett drew a couple of silver dol
lars and some small change from his
trousers pocket.

" There's my pile, Join — what's left of
my bird-dog."

Haines studied the coins in the horny
palm for a moment.

"You have a penny there. Pay me
that down." He did not smile, but
gravely accepted the copper, wrote out a
receipt for it, and signed a name that
was good for at least a million dollars.
"You can take possession this morning
— there's no one on the place. I'll drop
in this afternoon, and we'll inventory
the stock and machinery."

The man and the woman stood side by
side, without speech, until the carriage
had passed out of sight.

" He didn't forget," said Daggett, with
glistening eyes.

Lucy's lips parted, but closed again,
soundlessly.

The Gray Chieftain

BY CHARLES A. EASTMAN, M.D.

ON the westernmost verge of the
Cedar Butte stood Haykinskah
and his mate. They looked stead
ily toward the setting sun, over a land
scape which up to that time had scarce
ly been viewed by man — the inner circle
of the Bad Lands.

Cedar Butte guards the southeastern
entrance of that wonderland, standing
fully a thousand feet above the surround
ing country, and nearly half a mile long
by a quarter of a mile wide. The summit
is a level, grassy plain, its edges heavily
fringed with venerable cedars. To at
tempt the ascent of this butte is like
trying to scale the walls of Babylon, for
its sides are high and all but inaccessi
ble. Near the top there are hanging
]ands or terraces and innumerable pre
cipitous points, with here and there deep

174 Harper's Novelettes

chimneys or abysses in the solid rock.
There are many hidden recesses, and
more than one secret entrance to this
ancient castle of the Gray Chieftain
and his ancestors, but to assail it suc
cessfully required more than common
skill and spirit.

Many a coyote had gone up as high
as the second leaping bridge, and there
abandoned the attempt. Old Grizzly had
once tor twice begun the ascent with doubt
and misgiving, but soon discovered his
mistake, and made clumsy haste to de
scend before he should tumble into an
abyss from which no one ever returns.
Only Igmutanka, the mountain-lion, hnd
achieved the summit, and at every ascent
he had been well repaid; yet even he
seldom chose to risk such a climb, when
there were many fine hunting-grounds in
safer neighborhoods.

So it was that Cedar Butte had been
the peaceful home of the Big Spoon-
horns for untold ages. To be sure, some
of the younger and more adventurous
members of the clan would depart from
time to time to found new families, but
the wiser and more conservative were con
tent to remain in their stronghold. There
stood the two patriarchs, looking down
complacently upon the herds of buffalo,

The Gray Chieftain 175

antelope, and elks that peopled the lower
plains. While the red sun hovered over
the western hills, a coyote upon a near-by
eminence gave his accustomed call to
his mate. This served as a signal to all
the wild hunters of the plains to set up
their inharmonious evening serenade, to
which the herbivorous kindred paid but
little attention. The phlegmatic Spoon-
horii pair listened to it all with a fine
air of indifference, like that of one who
sits upon his own balcony, superior to the
passing noises of the street.

It was a charming moonlight night
upon the cedar-fringed plain, and there
the old chief presently joined the others
in feast and play. His mate sought out
a secret resting-place. She followed the
next gulch, which was a perfect laby
rinth of caves and pockets, and after
leaping two chasms she reached her fa
vorite spot. Here the gulch made a
square turn, affording a fine view of the
country through a windowlike opening.
Above and below this were perpendicular
walls, and at the bottom a small cavity
— the washout made by a root of a pine
which had long since fallen. To this led
a narrow terrace — so narrow that man or
beast would stop and hesitate long be
fore making the venture. The place was

176 Harper's Novelettes

her own by right of daring and discovery,
and the mother's instinct had brought her
here to-night.

In a little while relief came, and the
ewe stood over a new-born lamb, licking
tenderly the damp, silky coat of hair,
and trimming the little hoofs of their
cartilaginous points. The world was
quiet now, and those whose business it
was to hunt or feed at night must do so
in silence, for such is the law of the
plains. The wearied mother slept in
peace.

The sun was well above the butte when
she awoke, although it was cool and
shadowy still in her concealed abode. She
gave suck to the lamb, and caressed it
for some time before she reluctantly pre
pared its cradle according to the custom
of her people. She made a little pocket
in the floor of the cave and gently put
the baby in. Then she covered him all
up, save the nose and eyes, with dry soil.
She put her nose to his little sensitive
ear and breathed into it warm love and
caution, and he felt and understood that
he must keep his eyes closed and breathe
gently, lest bear or wolf or man should
catch his big eyes or hear his breathing
if they should find her trail. Again she
put her warm, loving nose to his eyes,

The Gray Chieftain 177

she patted a little more earth on his body
and smoothed it off. The tachinchana
closed his eyes in obedience, and she left
him for the plain above, in search of
food and sunlight.

At a little before dawn two wild hunters
left their camp and set out for the Cedar
Butte. Their movements were marked
by unusual care and secrecy. Presently
they hid their ponies in a deep ravine
and groped their way up through the
difficult Bad Lands, now and then paus
ing to listen. The two were close friends
and rival hunters of their tribe.

" I think, friend, you have mistaken
the haunts of the Spoonhorn," remarked
Gray foot, as the pair came out upon one
of the lower terraces. He said this
rather to test his friend, for it was their
habit thus to criticise and question one
another's judgment, in order to extract
from each other fresh observations.
What the one did not know about the
habits of the animals they hunted in
common, the other could usually supply.

" This is his home. I know it," re
plied Wahye. " And in this thing the
animals are much like ourselves. They
will not leave an old haunt unless forced
to do so, either by lack of food or
overwhelming danger."

178 Harper's Novelettes

They had already passed on to tho
next terrace and leaped a deep chasm to
gain the opposite side of the butte, when
Grayfoot suddenly whispered, " Inajin !"
(Stop!). Both men listened attentively.
" Tap, tap, tap," an almost metallic
sound came to them from around the
perpendicular wall of rock.

" He is chipping his horns," exclaimed
the hunter, overjoyed to surprise the
chieftain at this his secret occupation.
"Poor beast! they are now too long for
him, so that he cannot reach the short
grass to feed. Some of them die starv
ing, when they have not the strength
to do the hard bucking against the rock
to shorten their horns. He chooses this
time, when he thinks no one will hear
him, and he even leaves his own clan
when it is necessary for him to do this.
Come, let us crawl upon him unawares !"

They proceeded cautiously and with
catlike steps around the next projection,
and stood upon a narrow strip of slant
ing terrace. At short intervals the pound
ing noise continued, but, strain their
eyes as they might, they could see noth
ing. Yet they knew that a few paces
from them, in the darkness, the old
chief was painfully driving his massive
horns against the solid rock. So they lay

The Gray Chieftain 179

flat upon the ground under a dead cedar,
whose trunk and the color of the scanty
soil resembled their clothing, and on their
heads they had stuck some bunches of
sage-bush, to conceal them from the eyes
of the Spoonhorn.

With the first gray of the approaching
dawn the two hunters looked eagerly
about them. There, in all his majesty,
heightened by the wild grandeur of his
surroundings, stood the Gray Chieftain
of the Cedar Butte! He had no thought
of being observed at that hour. Entirely
unsuspicious of danger, he stood alone
upon a pedestal-like terrace, from which
vantage-point it was his wont to survey
the surrounding country every morning.
If the secret must be told, he had done
so for years, ever since he became the
head chief of the Cedar Butte clan.

It is the custom of their tribe that
when a ram attains the age of five years
he is entitled to a clan of his own. He
must thereafter defend his right and su
premacy against all comers. His expe
rience and knowledge are the guide of
his clan. In view of all this, the Gray
Chieftain had been very thorough in
his observations. There was not an ob
ject anywhere near the shape of bear,
wolf, or man for miles around his king-

i8o Harper's Novelettes

dom upon Hanta Pahah that was not
noted, as well as the relative positions of
rocks and conspicuous trees.

The best time for Haykinskah to make
his daily observations is at sunrise and
sunset, when the air is usually clear and
objects appear distinct. Between these
times the clan feed and settle down to
chew their cud and sleep; yet some are
always on the alert to catch a passing
stranger within their field of observation.
But the old chief Spoonhorn pays very
little attention. He may be nestled in a
gulch just big enough to hold him, either
sound asleep or leisurely chewing his
cud. The younger members of the clan
take their position upon the upper ter
races of the great and almost inaccessible
butte, under the shade of its projecting
rocks, after a whole night's feasting and
play upon the plain.

As Spoonhorn stood motionless, look
ing away off toward the distant hills,
the plain below appeared from this ele
vated point very smooth and sheetlike,
and every moving object a mere speck.
His form and color were not very differ
ent from the dirty gray rocks and clay
of the butte.

Wahye broke the silence: "I know of
no animal that stands so long without

The Gray Chieftain 181

movement, unless it is the turtle. I think
he is the largest ram I have ever seen."

"I am sure he did not chip where he
stands now," remarked Grayfoot. " This
chipping - place is a monastery to the
priests of the Spoonhorn tribe. It is
their medicine-man's lodge. I have more
than once approached the spot, but could
never find the secret entrance."

" Shall I shoot him now ?" whispered
his partner in the chase.

" No, do not do it. He is a real chief.
He looks mysterious and noble. Let us
learn to know him better. Besides, if we
kill him we will never see him again.
Look; he will fall to that deep gulch ten
trees' length below, where no one can
get at him."

As Grayfoot spoke, the animal shifted
his position, facing them squarely. The
two men closed their eyes and wrinkled
their motionless faces into the semblance
of two lifeless mummies. The old sage
of the mountains was apparently de
ceived; but after a few moments he got
down from his lofty position and disap
peared around a point of rock.

" I never care to shoot an animal while
he is giving me a chance to know his
ways," explained Grayfoot. " We have
plenty of buffalo meat. We are not hun-

182 Harper's Novelettes

gry. 'All we want is spoons. We can get
one or two sheep by and by, if we have
more wit than they."

To this speech Wahye agreed, for his
curiosity was now fully aroused by Gray-
foot's view, although he had never before
thought of it in that way. It had always
been the desire for meat that had chiefly
moved him in the matter of the hunt.

Having readjusted their sage wigs, the
hunters made the circuit of the abyss
that divided them from the ram, and
as they looked for his trail, they noticed
the tracks of a large ewe leading down
toward the inaccessible gulches.

"Ah! she has some secret down there.
She never leaves her clan like this, un
less it is to steal away for a personal
affair of her own."

So saying, Grayfoot and his fellow
tracked the ewe's footprint along the
verge of a deep gulch with much trouble
and patience. The hunter's curiosity
and a strong desire to know her secret
impelled the former to lead the way.

"What will be our profit if one slips
and goes down into the gulch, never to
be seen again?" remarked Wahye, as
they approached a leaping - place. The
chasm below was of a great depth and
dark. "It is not wise for us to follow

The Gray Chieftain 183

farther; this ewe has no horns that can
be made into spoons."

" Come, friend, it is when one is
doubting- that mishaps are apt to occur,"
urged his companion.

"Koda, heyu yo!" exclaimed Wahye
the next moment in distress.

"Hehehe, koda! hold fast!" cried the
other.

Wahye's moccasined foot had slipped
on the narrow trail, and in the twinkling
of an eye he had almost gone down a
precipice of a hundred feet; but by a des
perate launch forward he caught the
bough of an overhanging cedar and swung
by his hands over the abyss.

Quickly Grayfoot pulled both their
bows from the quivers. He first tied
himself to the trunk of the cedar with his
packing-strap, which always hung from
his belt. Then he held both the bows
toward his friend, who, not without diffi
culty, changed his hold from the cedar
bough to the bows. After a short but de
termined effort the two men stood side
by side once more upon the narrow foot
hold of the terrace. Without a word they
followed the ewe's track to the cave.

Here she had lain last night! Both
men began to search for other marks,
but they found not so much as a sign

1 84 Harper's Novelettes

of scratching anywhere. They exam
ined the ground closely, but without suc
cess. All at once a faint " ba-a-a " came
from almost under their feet. They saw
a puff of smokelike dust as the little
creature called for its mother. It had felt
the footsteps of the hunters, and mis
taken them for those of its own folk.

Wahye hastily dug into the place with
his hands and found the soil loose. Soon
he uncovered the little lamb. " Ba-a-a,"
it cried again, and quick as a flash
the ewe appeared, stamping the ground
in wrath.

Wahye seized an arrow and fitted it
to the string, but his companion checked
him. " No, no, my friend. It is not the
skin or meat that we are looking for.
We want horn for ladles and spoons.
The mother is right. We must let her
babe alone."

The wild hunters silently retreated,
and the ewe ran swiftly to the spot and
took her lamb away.

" So it is," said Grayfoot, after a long
silence, " all the tribes of earth have
some common feeling. I believe they are
people as much as we are. The Great
Mystery has made them what they are.
Although they do not speak our tongue,
we seem to understand their thought.

The Gray Chieftain 185

It is not right to take the life of any
of them unless necessity compels us to
do so.

" You know," he continued, " the ewe
conceals her lamb in this way until she
has trained it to escape from its enemies
by leaping up or down from terrace to
terrace. I have seen her teaching the
yearlings and two-year-olds to dive down
the face of a cliff which was fully twice
the height of a man. They strike on the
head and the two forefeet. The ram
falls largely upon his horns, which are
curved in such a way as to protect them
from injury. The body rebounds slight
ly, and they get upon their feet as easily
as if they had struck a pillow. At first
the yearlings hesitate and almost lose
their balance, but the mother makes them
repeat the performance until they have
accomplished it to her satisfaction.

" They are then trained to leap chasms
on all fours, and finally the upward jump,
which is a more difficult feat. If the
height is not great they can clear it neat
ly, but if it is too high for that, they
will catch the rocky ledge with their fore
feet and pull themselves up like a man.

" In assisting their young to gain
upper terraces they show much ingenuity.
I once saw them make a ladder of their

13

1 86 Harper's Novelettes

bodies. The biggest ram. stood braced
against the steep wall as high as his body
could reach, head placed between his fore
feet, while the next biggest one rode his
hind parts, and so on until the little ones
could walk upon their broad backs to the
top. We know that all animals make
their young ones practise such feats as
are necessary to their safety and advan
tage, and thus it is that these people
are so well fitted to their peculiar mode
of life.

"How often we are outwitted by the
animals we hunt! The Great Mystery
gives them this chance to save their lives
by eluding the hunter, when they have
no weapons of defence. The ewe has seen
us, and she has doubtless warned all the
clan of danger."

But there was one that she did not see !
When the old chief left his clan to go
to the secret place for chipping his horns,
the place where many a past monarch of
the Bad Lands has performed that pain
ful operation, he did not intend to re
join them immediately. It was custom
ary with him at that time to seek
solitude and sleep.

The two hunters found and carefully
examined the tracks of the fleeing clan.
The old ram was not among them. As

The Gray Chieftain 187

they followed the trail along the terrace
they came to a leaping-place which did
not appear to be generally used. Gray-
foot stopped and kneeled down to scruti
nize the ground below. "Ho!" he ex
claimed, "the old chief has gone down
this trail, but has not returned. He is
lying down near his chipping-place, if
there is no other outlet from there."

Both leaped to the next terrace below,
and followed the secret pass into a rocky
amphitheatre, opening out from the ter
race upon which they had first seen the
old ram. Here he lay asleep.

Wahye pulled an arrow from his
quiver.

"Yes," said his friend, "shoot now!

The old chief awoke to behold the most
dreaded hunter — man — upon the very
threshold of his sanctuary! Wildly he
sprang upward to gain the top of the
cliff. But Wahye was expert and quick
in the use of his weapon. He had sent
into his side a shaft that was deadly.
The monarch's forehoofs caught the
edge — he struggled bravely for a moment,
then fell limply to the floor below.

"He is dead. My friend, the noblest
of chiefs is dead!" exclaimed Grayfoot
as he stood over him, in great admiration
and respect for the Gray Chieftain.

The Inn of San Jacinto

BY ZOE DANA UNDERIIILL

YOU ask me if I believe in ghosts. Of
course I do. I believe in them be
cause I have felt one. It was in a
ruin, too, the correct place for ghosts;
but not exactly in the right kind of ruin,
for there was nothing imposing or weird
about it; it was a dusty, tumble-down
adobe shanty in New Mexico.

Do you remember Harry Felters —
what great promise he gave as a young
artist, and how he never came to any
thing? He and I were great chums at
the Art School, and afterwards we fell
into the way of going on sketching tours
together. He was a nice fellow, quick
tempered, but very good-natured too, and
it would have been hard to find a jollier
companion. I was delighted one autumn
when he proposed we should make a little
Western excursion together; he wanted
to get some of the atmospheric effects on
the high plains. . We started in Septem
ber, bought ourselves a couple of broncos

The Inn of San Jacmto 189

when we reached the country we wanted,
and started off on the trail which ran
near the railroad. We had splendid
weather, took all the time we wanted, and
got a lot of first-rate things; but Felters
was looking forward all the time to stop
ping" at a little Mexican village — San
Jacinto, the name was — which lay some
distance off the main trail, but which he
had heard was the rarest place. A friend
of his had been there a couple of years
before, but had only been able to stay a
day or so. He reported a tolerable inn,
and we planned to stop for several weeks,
making excursions into the surrounding
country, and getting what we were
particularly anxious for — some character
sketches of the natives. We had the
pleasantest anticipations of our time
there.

The day before we expected to reach
San Jacinto we struck off on to a side
trail across the hills. We learned after
wards that there was more danger in un
dertaking this lonely journey than we
had any idea of at the time, but we came
to no harm. We slept out that night,
and late the next afternoon we came in
sight of the village, perched half-way up
a long, sloping mesa. We reached it as
the sun was setting. There was but a

i go Harper's Novelettes

single street running between low adobe
huts, but, to our surprise, this street was
thronged with Mexicans and Indians
in holiday costumes — fierce, agile-looking
fellows in thumping hats, and slim girls
with mantillas over their heads.

We mustered our slender stock of
Spanish, and inquired of the first group
we met the reason of the crowd. We
found some local fair was in progress,
and it was not only the inhabitants of
San Jacinto we beheld, but of all the set
tlements for fifty miles around. Harry,
in the seventh heaven of delight, was
gaping at all the wrinkled old men and
dark-eyed girls, in their picturesque ar
ray, but I was hungry, and not willing to
waste time on the picturesque just then,
so I hauled him along, protesting and
turning round all the time, towards what
had been pointed out to us as the inn we
were in search of. It stood quite at the
other end of the street, and looked bigger
and more imposing than the rest of the
houses, being newly painted a fine brick-
color.

" Here we are at last, and a good thing
too," said I, as the owner of the house
came bustling out to receive us. He hur
ried us into a long, crowded room, and
set a couple of cooling drinks before us

The Inn of San Jacinto 191

in enormous glasses before we had time
to speak, chattering all the time with
great civility. But as soon as we be
gan to talk of rooms he sang a different
tune.

"Ah, sefiores," he cried, in a despair
ing tone, " that is an impossibility, quite
an impossibility. Every inch of room in
the house is taken — is crowded, I may
say. As soon as they are done drinking
and singing we put mattresses down on
the floor of the eating-room here; and I
will try my best to find a corner for a
mattress for the two noble gentlemen.
Mattresses in plenty I have, but no space
to spread them, unfortunately."

"Well, well," broke in Harry, "it
isn't mattresses we want. It's a room to
ourselves to sleep in. Surely we can find
something at some of the neighbors'. We
won't grumble if it's a little one."

But the landlord shook his head. " No,
no," he reiterated; "there isn't an empty
space anywhere in the village big enough
to hold a canary-bird. Every house is
full."

" But you must have some little corner
or cupboard you could put us in. Your
own room, for instance. If we pay you
well, couldn't you move out of that for a
night or two, just till this fair is over?"

1 92 Harper's Novelettes

The man shrugged his shoulders. "I
haven't slept in my own room for three
nights. Seven women have it," he said.
" I take one of the benches down here."

"Very well," cried Harry, who was
getting out of temper; "then we will
simply go on without stopping. We meant
to spend several weeks here, but of course
if you haven't accommodations — " And
he turned and picked up his saddle
bags from the bench where he had flung
them.

"Oh, come, now, Harry," said I, "we
don't want to leave the moment we get
here. For a few nights we can certainly
stand it, and then it will quiet down
again."

" Yes, yes," cried the landlord, evident
ly much impressed to hear of the long
stay we had intended, and anxious to
detain us if promises would do it; "oh
yes, yes ! By the end of the week the fair
is over, and then you can have splendid
rooms — as many rooms as you like."

But as you know, Harry was always a
pig-headed fellow. He buckled his bags
tight.

" No," said he ; " I'm not going to sleep
in any such mess as this. If we can't
have rooms to ourselves, we go on to
night. That's all about it,"

The Inn of San Jacinto 193

The landlord wrung his hands. " Ah,"
he cried, " what a shame ! what a shame !
To have the gentlemen leave my house!''
Then I saw a sly gleam come into his
eye. " Ah," he cried, " I have it ! I have
it! If the gentlemen would only be sat
isfied. Do you mind, perhaps, if you
sleep in a very old room? Oh, very, very
old!"

" No, no !" we interposed, in a breath.

" But it is very old," he went on, look
ing at us narrowly, " and there is but the
one room for the two."

"That is nothing," we cried. "We
won't mind that in the least, as long as
we don't have to sleep on the floor with
strangers."

" And even there," he went on, " I
fear you would have to occupy the same
bed; there is but one bedstead in the
room. To be sure," he said, reflectively,
" one of you might have a mattress on
the floor even there, but it would be very
cold, I fear. The floor is of stone, and
the dampness — "

" Oh, never mind," we interrupted ;
" for three or four nights it won't matter,
as long as we can have the room to
ourselves."

" Certainly, certainly," he reiterated,
" to yourselves. I should not think of

1 94 Harper's Novelettes

putting any one else in the room of tlio
two noble gentlemen. Sit down, sit
down, and make yourselves easy. I will
send my niece to make ready for you.
You must not expect too much, gentle
men. It is in the old part of the house
that has gone to ruin a good deal; that
is why I never thought of it before. But
this one room is strongly built. It is
safe enough; you need have no fear of
roof or walls. But it is dusty; I must
have it swept." And so talking on, half
to himself and half to us, he filled our
glasses again, and got himself out of the
room. Presently we heard his voice
outside calling, " Julita ! Julita !" and
then a long and rather vehement whis
pered conversation was carried on not
far from the window.

It was an hour or more, and we had
finished our supper, before he returned to
show us to our apartment. We found it
was in a deserted building whose presence
we had not even suspected from the front
of the house. It lay far to the back and
one side, and was, our host told us, the
old original inn, which had been built by
his great-uncle several times removed,
and had fallen too much out of repair to
use. But the room to which he led us was
still in tolerable preservation, a queer old

The Inn of San Jadnto 195

place, with walls and floor of rough stone,
and lighted by a small grated window
high up at one side. They had set in a
few odd pieces of furniture for us, and a
big four-post bedstead, which looked as
old as the room, was piled high with an
enormous feather-bed. For the bedstead
our host apologized profusely. Not to be
able to furnish us at least with separate
sleeping accommodations weighed heavi
ly on his spirits. But what could he do?
It was to be regarded as good-fortune
that the old bedstead had not long since
been brought into the house and given to
earlier comers. Its age and weight were
the sole reasons it was still at our dis
posal. For the feather-bed he did not
think it necessary to apologize, though
that was certainly what seemed most for
midable to us. However, we were pleased
enough to get anything to ourselves, and
told him so.

We went back to the big hall, and sat
there awhile smoking and watching the
queer collection of humanity it held, but
we were both tired with our ride, and
presently asked the landlord for our can
dles. He brought them, one for each,
and each with a little box of Swedish
matches beside it on the candlestick.
But he was a long time lighting them,

196 Harper's Novelettes

snuffed them out once or twice, and final
ly said, with a curious air of gravity for
so slight a speech:

" The gentlemen see that our candles
are not easy to light. Might I beg of
them to leave the night-light burning in
their chamber?"

" Night-light ?" cried Harry, brusquely.
" Oh no, we don't want a night-light.
There is nothing the matter with those
candles. It's only the clumsy way you
snuffed them." And with the word he
drew a match from his pocket, lit it
quickly, and in a moment had the candle
burning clearly.

The landlord looked perturbed. " See !
see !" he cried. " Once the candle may
light quickly, and another time it may
not. The little light will not disturb you.
I beg the gentlemen will leave it burn
ing. There will be no extra charge —
none whatever." And he looked at us
anxiously.

" Oh, nonsense !" said Harry, turning
away with his candle.

But the landlord must have thought
I was of a more accommodating disposi
tion, for now he caught me by the coat
sleeve. " I beg, I beg," he repeated ; and,
tired of his persistence, I answered, care
lessly, " Oh, all right; I won't put it out,"

The Inn of San Jacinto 197

and left before he had time to say any
thing more.

But we were not yet free from impor
tunities about our lights, for as we passed
the kitchen his fat old wife, who super
intended the cooking for her husband's
guests, waddled towards us.

" Candles ! candles 1" she panted. " Oh,
they're no good. You'll blow them out
before you think twice. But look out
not to disturb the little night-light .Julita
set up in the niche. That '11 give you
light enough to see by all night."

" Good Lord ! what do we want to see
for? The night's made for sleeping,"
cried Harry, roughly, and dragged me
through the kitchen like a whirlwind,
while behind us we still heard the wheez
ing voice of the old woman discours
ing on the insufficiency of candles and
the superior advantages of Julita's oil-
taper.

We had not done with the advocates of
the night-light even yet. As we made
our way through the dusty passage,
stumbling over the broken slabs of stone
which formed its floor, we encountered
Julita herself, pale and trembling, and
regarding with anxious fear the lantern
which she held in her hand. She jumped
aside with a scream when she caught

198 Harper's Novelettes

sight of us?, then laid her hand on her
heart with a look of relief.

" Oh, blessed saints, it is the gentle
men !" she exclaimed. " I have just been
to look after the light in your room my
self." She spoke as one conscious of
having bestowed an inestimable favor.
"It is burning brightly. The little oil-
lamp is high up in the niche of the wall ;
nothing can overturn it. The oil is of
the best. It will burn all night — "

" Oh, come !" cried Harry, who by this
time had entirely lost his temper. " Who
wants your infernal lamp! For Heav
en's sake, let us have a little peace and
darkness.'7

"Ah, no, no!" cried the girl, recoiling
as if he had struck her — "not darkness!
The gracious gentleman did not think of
what he was saying. Oh, sir," laying
her hand on my arm as Harry pushed
angrily past her, " you surely would not
put out the light? You will surely let it
burn all night ?" and she looked at me as
desperately as if she were imploring me
not to cut my throat. Her eyes were full
of tears. I felt sorry for such distress,
even while I was annoyed by these con
tinuous appeals from a singularly light-
loving populace, and answered, hastily:

"Oh, certainly, certainly, my good

The Inn of San Jacinto 199

girl." Slipping past her, I contrived to
get into the room and shut the door be
fore she could speak again.

Harry came up and locked it.

"Confound them!" he said; "what is
the matter with them, all? We have
matches, I hope. Why should they take
such a particularly fervent interest in our
lamp ?" and he laid his match-box on the
chair at the head of the ponderous bed
stead, beside the candle which he had just
extinguished.

Then he reached up and blew out the
little flame in the niche above our heads.

" There!" said he; "I hope that's done
with for to-night, anyway."

" Oh, Harry," I remonstrated, " I told
the girl I wouldn't put it out."

" Well, you haven't, have you ?" he re
joined, roughly. " Now you'd better not
talk any more of that intolerable non
sense, or I shall get into a temper. Put
out your own light when you're ready to
go to sleep, and that's the end of it. I'm
tired to death."

It wasn't five minutes before he had
tumbled into the wide bed, nor five more
before he was asleep. I felt wakeful, and
made my preparations in a more leisurely
way, but presently I too stretched out
my weary limbs on the soft feathers.

200 Harper's Novelettes

The little window with its iron bars stood
diagonally across from the foot of the
bed, and as I blew out my candle and
sank back on the pillow my eyes fell on
the dim gray square. I seemed to see
some vague black form pass between mo
and it. My heart gave a sudden throb,
and I started to raise myself; but before
I had done so I felt in the darkness some
thing fly at my throat. My hands went
up instinctively, and grasped the thick
cold fingers which were clutching me so
tightly that it was impossible to breathe.
The terror of death fell upon me, and
with all my strength I tore at the invisi
ble hands which wTere squeezing my life
out, but I could no more move them than
I could have moved the solid rock. I
was powerless to make a sound. I set
my head and shoulders against the bulk
which pressed upon me and tried to push
it back, but vainly, though in my agony
I writhed and twisted like a snake. I felt
that I was growing faint, my head rang,
and my senses were faltering, when in
my convulsive movements my foot touch
ed Harry's warm and sleeping body. T
gathered myself together, and struck out
with all the strength I had left, I felt
him roll over, and then that he was sit
ting up in bed. It was like heaven to

The Inn of San Jacinto 201

know that lie was beside me and roused,
but even then I thought to myself there
was little chance of his coming to my
rescue in time.

Harry called to me once or twice, and
then I felt his hand laid on my heaving
shoulder. The next moment I heard him
jump out of bed, and it seemed not a
second before the flare of a candle lit up
the room. The pressure was gone from
my throat. I drew in the air again and
yet again, but was still too exhausted and
bewildered to know anything but that the
struggle was over, and I was once more
drawing the blessed breath of life.

"Good gracious! What's the matter
with you ?" I heard Harry say ; but I only
moaned.

"Here, wake up!" he cried, and shook
me by the shoulder. I lifted myself on
one elbow, and looked around with a
shudder. There was nothing in sight but
Harry, who was looking at me sharply.
I put my hand to my throat; it was
bruised and sore to the touch.

"Oh, Harry," I panted, "something
awful has happened!"

" Something awful !" he repeated.
"You've had an awful nightmare, that's
what's the matter — and you aren't awake
yet, either. Shake yourself together, man,

14

2O2 Harper *s Novelettes

can't yon? You look as if you'd seen a
ghost. I declare your eyes are all blood
shot. Oh, nonsense!" as I slipped back
on the pillow, with a sigh. " Come, brace
up, and have a little style about you."

" Oh, Harry," I reiterated, " there has
been something- awful. It's- no night
mare. I wasn't asleep. The minute the
light was out some one — something —
came at my throat. In another moment
I should have been strangled, if you
hadn't waked."

"Why, I didn't do anything, except
jump out of bed when you kicked me.
You needn't thank me for anything more
than waking you up — and that isn't half
done yet."

"Oh, I'm awake enough!" I cried.
" Well, then," said he, " that's all there
is to be said about it. "We'll blow out
the light and try our hand at sleeping
again," arid as he spoke he bent over the
candle to extinguish it ; but I caught him
and pulled him away quickly.

"No, no!" I shouted, filled with un
controllable terror; "let it burn. Light
the little night-lamp, won't you? I've
had such a scare I'm afraid to be left in
the dark."

"All right," he answered, with a
laugh; "we'll keep the promise to Julita

The Inn of San Jacinto 203

the rest of the night, anyway. I suppose
it was your uneasy conscience wouldn't
let you rest."

In a few moments more he was again
sound asleep beside me, but my fears
were not so easily quieted. A hundred
imaginary noises made me start up to
peer into the distant corners of the room,
or look up at the black square of the win
dow; and at every little quiver of the
tiny flame burning in the niche my heart
jumped. I lay awake till the dawn came
in at the grated casement, and then fell
asleep, utterly worn out.

Harry was moving about the room,
humming a song, when I woke. The
bright sun was shining through the bars
of the window. I felt ashamed of myself,
and when he caught my eye he broke into
a roar of laughter.

"Well, I say," he shouted, "I hope
you've managed to pluck up a little spirit
this morning. I never saw a man scared
so blue in my life. For Heaven's sake,
tell us what you were dreaming about.
A whole menagerie, I should say. How's
your neck this morning?" And he went
off into a fresh peal of laughter.

"Well, laugh if you like," said I; "it
was awful. I can't imagine how I came
to get into such a state. Good Heavens!

204 Harper's Novelettes

I can't bear to think of it even now." I
paused a moment, for as the memory of
the night's grisly phantom came back
clearly, an intolerable shiver of fear went
through me. " Besides," I went on, " my
neck is all sore still. I believe you can
see the bruises."

" By Jove !" he said, coming up and
looking at me closely. " By Jove !" he
repeated, touching my throat gingerly
with the tips of his fingers. " That's the
most curious thing I ever saw! You're
all black and blue! How did you do
it?"

"That's more than I know," said I,
"unless the thing that came at me last
night did it." And then I told him every
detail of my curious experience of the
night. As I told it my own faith in its
reality grew, and I could see that he was
impressed with the same feeling; but
when I came to the end he shook himself,
seemed to gather his routed forces, and
gave an incredulous laugh again.

" Well," he said, looking down at me
from his great height — " well, that cer
tainly is a queer story. And you think
all that could go on with me asleep right
beside you and me not know it? Eh?
Oh, nonsense! You had a nightmare, of
course, and that's what made you kick

The Inn of San Jacinto 205

out so. My shins are as black and blue
as your neck."

"Yes, and what made my neck black
and blue ?" I broke in. " Do you suppose
you had the nightmare too, and were try
ing to twist it?"

"No, no! Of course not," said he.
"You must have twisted your own fin
gers around it in your sleep somehow.
That isn't so unlikely as that a phantom
tried to throttle you." And he gave anew
a boisterous laugh.

There was no use in arguing with him ;
and besides, I had no tenable ground for
argument. I could not bring myself to
believe in his explanation; but still less
could I, in the full light of reason and
glare of day, believe in the unseen foe
who had made the darkness of night so
horrible. With an effort I succeeded in
dismissing the whole thing from my
mind, and dressed to join Harry in the
sketching excursions which we had
planned the day before. Julita was in
the passage as we went through to break
fast. She did not seem busy about any
thing, and by her attitude I judged she
had been watching our door. At any
rate, as we opened it her face was pale
and troubled, but a moment later broke
into smiles as she saw us both emerge

206 Harper's Novelettes

from the room. The landlord, too, greet
ed us with fervor, and served us an excel
lent breakfast, which his fat wife came
in to watch us eat. Indeed, every one
about the inn seemed to take an interest
in us, and gathered in the doorways to
look at us. This we attributed to the
fact that we were, in a way, foreigners;
and they were all so good-natured about
it. breaking out into smiles and expres
sions of satisfaction whenever we looked
their way, that we did not mind.

We had a successful day of it, gather
ing in a collection of queer and pictu
resque figures, and didn't get back till
dark. I had felt strangely tired all day,
and was glad to yield to Harry's sugges
tion that we should go early to bed. He
stuck his sketches all around, and gloated
over them in the dim illumination of the
candles; but I was overcome with sleep,
and tumbled into bed as quickly as I
could.

''I'll get on the other side, Harry," I
said, " if you aren't ready to come yet."

" All right, old man," said he, walking
back and forth before his pictures. " I'm
not ready yet. I hope this light won't
keep you awake."

"On^the contrary," said I, "I much
prefer it. I can't forget my bad dreams

The Inn of San Jacinto 207

so quickly. Do leave the little night-
light burning, Harry, like a good fellow."

"All right," he answered; and in a
moment I was asleep.

I don't know how long afterwards it
was that I was awakened abruptly by be
ing pushed almost out of bed. I was so
sound asleep that I could not collect my
thoughts all at once, and lay for a mo
ment trying to rouse myself, when the
blow was violently repeated, and then I
became aware that Harry was writhing
and beating his arms about at my side.
In a sudden spasm of terror I sprang out
of bed, ran round to the other side where
the matches were, and struck the whole
bunch as I gathered them in my hand.
They flared up, and shivering with fright,
I moved to the bedside. There lay Har
ry, his eyes staring wide with horror, and
drawing occasionally a long moaning
breath. I knew well enough what it was,
and wasted no time on questions, but
hurried to light the candle before the
matches should go out. Then, for safety,
I also reached up and kindled the little
taper, which Harry had evidently ex
tinguished, as the oil in the glass was
scarcely consumed. Afterwards I turned
back to Harry, drew the covers away to
give him air, carried the light to the foot

208 Harper's Novelettes

of the bed, where his eyes could rest
upon it, and draw from it the reassurance
that I knew nothing else could give, and
softly chafed his nerveless hands. Pres
ently I had the satisfaction of seeing the
wild and wandering look die out of his
face and a certain composure return to it.
He was evidently getting possession of
his faculties.

" Well, Harry," I said, when I saw
this, " I suppose you have had the night
mare?"

A sickly smile drew up the corners of
his mouth.

" Confound you," he murmured, " I
was just thinking that was the first thing
you would say, and now you've said it!
Good Heavens!" he cried, in a louder
tone, raising himself in bed and peering
around the room, " I can't believe the
hideous thing is gone. Are you sure it
isn't in one of the corners yet? I tell
you I had a narrow squeak for my life.
I wouldn't care to come so near death
again in a hurry. If that last kick hadn't
routed you out I knew I should never
have strength enough for another. Oh,
what terror!" The wild look came back
as he talked; he raised his hand and felt
of his throat, which, from where I stood,
I could see was red and swollen.

The Inn of San Jacmto 209

"It is hideous," said I. "You surely
must know now it was no nightmare."
He nodded, and gave again a quick,
frightened look about. I went on :

"It — it is something that only comes
in the dark. It cannot be a real thing,
for it is gone with the first ray of light.
It is real enough to strangle a man,
though. Heavens, Harry, suppose either
of us had slept here alone!" We both
shuddered.

After a little while Harry quieted
down, but there was very little sleep for
either of us that night. We lighted
everything within reach. I had a trav
elling lamp with me, and Harry hauled
out of his bag one of those little pocket-
lanterns that his sister had packed in just
as he was leaving home. He said he
laughed at her when she did it, but we
were glad enough to see it now. We
dozed and woke at intervals, always re
assured to see our improvised illumina
tion when we unclosed our eyes. Every
thing was still as the grave, and except
for our excited nerves we might have
rested in peace the whole night through.
When daylight came we both gave a
sigh of relief, and turning over, fell into
a sleep so heavy that we never stirred

210 Harper's Novelettes

until we were wakened by a tremendous
thumping at the door.

"For the love of God," we heard the
landlord's voice shouting outside, " an
swer me, gentlemen! Answer me! Are
you well ? Are you safe ? Speak, gentle
men ! Answer me !"

Between his rough tones we heard
sighs and ejaculations, the low talking of
men, and the rustling of petticoats.

" Why, we're all right," I called back,
and then came a chorus of congratula
tions and thanksgiving to all the saints
from behind the door. Evidently there
had been a little crowd in the hall, for
we could hear them dispersing.

We talked the matter over as we were
dressing. To tell the truth, I was thor
oughly frightened, and felt sick of the
whole business. I couldn't understand
it, and the more I thought of it the more
I disliked it. I didn't attempt to conceal
my feelings, either. I said outright that
I was scared and wanted to get away,
and proposed to Harry that as soon as we
had had our breakfast we should saddle
our horses and ride off on the trail. From
the stories we had heard since we reach
ed the village I understood better than I
had done what risk there was in such a
lonely ride, but I would a great deal

The Inn of San Jacmto 211

rather be killed by a red man in the day
light than by a monster in the dark, and
1 said so. But Harry took quite a differ
ent view of the matter. The effect of
choking on his disposition seemed to be
the reverse of depression, and he talked
in a vindictive way of our invisible as
sailant.

" No, you don't !" he said, when I tried
to persuade him to leave. " Not much I
go till I know what is the matter here.
You couldn't drag me away with wild
horses till I've had another wrestle with
that thing !"

"Mercy, Harry!" said I; "I don't see
why you want another; one would have
finished you quite if I hadn't been there
to help you. Look at your throat now;
it's purple and red; you'll have to tie a
handkerchief or something round it to
make yourself presentable. Whatever
that awful thing was, it was stronger
than you or I. What can you want to
meet it again for? Prudence is the bet
ter part of valor, and I propose to quit
this horrible spot before I am an hour
older."

"You'll quit it alone, then," he said,
sulkily, "for I'm not going with you.
I'm going to stay and see it out."

I reasoned and expostulated with him,

212 Harper's Novelettes

but all to no purpose. He was as obsti
nate as a mule. I could not face the pos
sible Indians by myself, and still less
could I leave bim to confront alone the
dangers which I believed threatened him
if he remained. I told him that if he
stayed, I did, and then we laid our plans.
Harry had no theory at all to account
for our strange experience; he simply
said he would not go away until he had
fathomed it. Whatever the risks might
be, he wished, while wide-awake and in
full possession of his faculties, to put out
the light, and encounter the attack of our
midnight enemy.

Through the previous day we had
scarcely spoken of my adventure of the
first night, having by tacit agreement al
luded to it as a nightmare. Now, after
what Harry had gone through, this ex
planation was no longer tenable. Still,
we decided it would be better to say noth
ing of it to any one outside. When we
issued from our room we found ourselves
again the centre of interest for all the
frequenters of the inn. Those who did
not come forward to speak to us peeked
at us from behind corners. A continu
ous procession passed through the room
where we took breakfast, all on the alert
for our every movement. The landlord

The Inn of San Jadnto 213

apologized by saying we were strangers,
and every one was naturally struck by
our elegant appearance, and also that,
owing to our habit of late rising, the sim
ple people of the town had become some
what anxious lest it might be an illness
or other untoward occurrence which had
kept us in our room so long. I imagined
that he either knew something of our ad
venture or suspected it, from the sharp
ness with which he looked at us. But we
gave him no satisfaction, simply assured
him that we were in the habit of sleeping
late, that we were charmed to inspire in
terest in the bosoms of the appreciative
inhabitants of San Jacinto, and should
always endeavor to live up to the reputa
tion for elegance which he so kindly im
puted to us.

We sketched all day. When night
came and we retreated to our room, it was
with the intention of thoroughly investi
gating the mystery. We had already
taken occasion to inspect the outside of
the building in the daytime. The room
in which we slept was part of an old
adobe structure, so far gone to ruin that
this was the only portion in good preser
vation. The walls of this one room, how
ever, were perfectly solid. Nowhere was
there a flaw in them. There could be no

214 Harper's Novelettes

possible entrance from the outside except
by the door and small grated window in
the hall.

When we locked our door for the night
we placed some percussion-caps in such
a way that they must explode if it were
opened even a crack. Then we turned
our attention to the inside of the cham
ber. We peered into every crack and
cranny of the wall, which offered plenty
of opportunity for such investigation.
But in spite of its rough and irregular
surface it was absolutely sound; the
stones were heavy and well joined; there
was not an aperture anywhere big enough
for a man to get his fingers through,
much less his whole body. The roof was
perfectly tight. Then we turned our at
tention to the window, and examined that
with special care; for I found that with
Harry, as with me, the first premonition
of approaching danger had been the pass
ing of some indistinct dark body across
its misty square. But here as elsewhere
it was evidently impossible that any sub
stantial form should have found en
trance. The sides of the aperture were
thick and strong, and the whole opening
crossed by three iron bars as big as my
thumb, let into the solid stone, and
clamped down so securely that there could

The Inn of San Jacmto 215

be no chance of their ever having moved
since they were put in. The intervals
between them were scarcely two inches
across.

We went all over the floor. It was
made of rough stones set in the firm
earth. Nowhere did it give a hollow
sound, and its condition showed the sur
face could not have been disturbed for
untold years. We took everything off the
bed, and looked beneath it. We moved
the two or three small pieces of furniture
which had been set into the room since
our arrival. Finally, absolutely satisfied
that there was no avenue by which any
human being could enter the apartment,
we made our preparations for the night.
Each set a chair at the head of the bed
just within reach of his own hand, and
on it a candle and a plentiful supply of
matches. Our revolvers we laid, Harry
under his pillow, and I on the chair be
side me. As we calculated, the enemy
could attack but one of us at a time, and
as the other would be on the watch, it
should be easy to overpower him from
behind.

We lay down, fully dressed, on either
side of the bed, and I blew out my can
dle.

" Are you all ready ?" said Harry.

216 Harper's Novelettes

I cast a quick glance about the room,
and said:

"Yes, ready."

Pie extinguished the remaining light.
For a moment there was perfect silence.
Then across the window we both saw, or
rather felt than saw, through the dark
ness, a vague shape pass. Harry touched
me with his elbow ; the next second I felt
my throat clutched in a grasp so fierce
that all hope of freeing myself from it
died within me. My one thought was
that as the creature had attacked me,
Harry would be able to rescue me, and as
the clutch tightened I was filled with a
blind fury at his delay. It was just then
that a frantic plunge at my side made
me aware that Harry, like myself, was
fighting silently and wildly; his arms
struck me as he hit out, and his kicks
were as furious as his blows. I raised
my hand again to tear, however vainly,
at the thick fingers closed around my
throat. There was but one hand there,
and as my senses swam for want of breath
I realized that the creature must be hold
ing Harry and me both, one in each hand.
In my struggle I had moved so far across
the bed that I could not reach the
matches. Yet I knew that there lay our
only chance for life, and with a sudden

The Inn of San Jacinto 217

convulsive effort I managed, not to shake
off the clutch, but in spite of it to press
so far to one side that I felt my hand
touch the edge of the chair. It gave me
new strength to know myself so near to
light and life, and with a second strug
gle I laid my hand upon the matches,
raised and struck them against the side
of the bed. I had never known such hap
piness before — I never shall again — as
shot through my heart when my blurred
eyes saw the first flicker of the tiny blue
flame. The next instant, as the yellow
blaze flared up, the awful constriction
was gone from my windpipe. For a
second I lay still, unable to do more than
draw a faint and painful breath, then
terror lest the tiny sticks should burn
out and leave me in darkness nerved my
fainting will. I put out my other hand,
gathered more matches, kindled them at
the first, and holding the bunch like a
tiny torch, I leaned over and lighted the
candle. Exhausted by the effort, I fell
back fainting on the pillow.

When I came to, the candle was burn
ing brightly. I opened my eyes with a
sigh to drink in the luxury of the light,
then closed them again in utter weari
ness, and lay without a thought, content
ed in the blissful consciousness that I
15

2i 8 Harper's Novelettes

was alive and safe. I must have remained
so for some time, when there suddenly
went through my half -torpid brain a
memory of Harry. I had not felt him
move, and the thought alarmed me so
that I sat up in bed, as if roused by an
electric shock, and bent over him. His
eyes were staring wide, but he lay mo
tionless, and made no response when I
called him by name. I laid my hand on
his forehead. It was warm. So was his
hand, though it dropped nervelessly from
mine when I left hold of it. I fancied I
could detect a faint breath drawn at long
intervals, and a slight, but very slight,
pulsation of the heart. There was evi
dently not a moment to be lost. I jumped
from the bed, though I found I was so
bruised and sore with struggling that
every movement brought sharp pain. I
ran to the door, and in spite of the un
reasoning horror which attacked me of
letting in the darkness, I flung it open
and shouted with all my might for help.
A few seconds of such clamor and I
heard answering voices; a moment more,
and it seemed as if people by the hun
dred, all bearing lamps, candles, lanterns,
began to stream along the corridor. They
flocked into the room, and it scarcely
needed my few hasty words to set them to

The Inn of San Jacinto 219

work with Harry. Almost before I had
spoken they had him stripped, and three
or four active Mexicans were rubbing
and kneading him like so many furies.
The women flew for hot water and
brandy. In a few moments a long shud
dering sigh told that his vital forces were
returning, and in a little more I had what
was to me the ineffable satisfaction of
seeing his eyelids close, and shut out the
look of horror which had seemed stamped
upon the eyeballs beneath them.

Of course we moved Harry out of that
room immediately, but it took weeks of
the most careful nursing before he could
leave San Jacinto. During all that time,
as you may well believe, I spent every
moment I could spare from him in trying
to fathom the causes of our horrible ex
perience. But the more I searched the
more inexplicable the whole affair be
came. At first I very naturally suspect
ed that it was part of some scheme for
robbery or murder on the part of the peo
ple of the inn, but I soon became con
vinced that they were perfectly innocent.
There was no mistaking the sincerity of
their concern for what had happened, nor
the simple friendliness with which they
helped to care for Harry. They were
coarse and superstitious people, but not

220 Harper's Novelettes

criminal, and not unkindly. I detected,
however, a certain shade of self-reproach,
if not remorse, in their manner, and when
I had probed this to the bottom I had
found the only explanation for the whole
affair which I ever reached. It was so
utterly unreasonable that I can only give
it to you and leave you to make what you
can of it.

When we carried Harry to the miser
able little adobe hut at the other end of
the street, which was hastily abandoned
for his use, I heard an uproar behind us
in the direction of the inn, to which at
the time I paid no attention. And dur
ing that afternoon, in the intervals be
tween Harry's repeated fainting attacks,
I heard shouts, mixed with hollow crash
ing sounds, for which I did not even try
to account. But when in the course of a
few days I permitted myself a short walk,
I strolled in the direction of the inn, and
there found that the ruinous structure in
which we had lodged had been torn down.
The big stones lay scattered in every di
rection, but not one remained on top of
another. I asked the landlord what it
meant.

" Ah, seiior," said he, " it was the peo
ple that did it. They would not let the
old building stand another hour. And

The Inn of San Jacinto 221

perhaps they were right, though the loss
is mine. I am happier myself now that
it is down. Who knows? Some time in
the future I might have been tempted
again by greed to let some luckless trav
eller have that room. The senor knows
our people are very superstitious, and
make more of such things than those in
the great world. I wished to be wiser
than my neighbors — the saints pardon
me ! When the traveller was found dead
there fifteen years ago I made sure he
had died of some sudden illness; and as
for the two who died there in my father's
time, and the others before that, I forced
myself to disbelieve in them. But the
senor's story of what happened the other
night has taught me better. The place
was accursed. It is well that it has been
destroyed."

I asked him what he meant by calling
it accursed, and he told me a long story
of the old house, in which we had occu
pied the only habitable chamber. The
building was over a hundred years old,
and had been occupied for many years
as an inn, whose visitors were the Indians
and Mexicans at their seasons of festival,
and such few travellers as made their
way into that distant region. Some sev
enty-five years before it had been in the

222 Harper's Novelettes

possession of a man of enormous strength
and evil disposition, under whose rule
the place gained a bad reputation exact
ly in proportion as the landlord increased
in wealth. Two or three travellers who
were known to have money about them
were never seen again after entering the
doors ; the landlord maintained that each
of them had continued his journey the-
next day, starting before dawn, and there
was no one to gainsay him. Others were
found dead in bed with black marks on
their throats, but beyond these there was
nothing to throw suspicion on any one
person, and the terror with which the
brutal innkeeper inspired his neighbors
was sufficient to crush out inquiry. At
last, however, the landlord was caught
in the act. An American engineer, car
rying a large sum of money, had passed
through the town, and taken shelter at
the inn for the night. He made no se
cret of the money about him, perhaps
because, being a very large and strong man
and well armed, he had entire confidence
in his ability to keep his own. But that
night some wretched gringos, who were
sleeping on tho floor of the kitchen,
heard a shout for help. Too timid to
answer the call themselves, they ran for
aid, and presently, with the assistance

The Inn of San Jacinto 223

of half a dozen others, burst in the door
of the man's room. They found the man
dead, and the landlord kneeling on the
bed, with his knotted fingers still twist
ed round the throat of his victim. Be
fore he could stir, while he was still
blinking at the sudden light from the
broken door, he was shot dead by another
American, a miserable tramp, half gam
bler and half drunkard, who had joined
in breaking open the door. The avenger,
much lauded by the populace, had gone
on his way the same day. The two bodies
had been buried side by side outside the
town. There was now no question as to
the cause of the previous deaths and dis
appearances.

But the room in which such ghastly
crimes had been committed had ever
since been regarded with horror by the
natives. According to their belief, the
man who died in the commission of such
a deed became an evil spirit, condemned
to exist in darkness, and to repeat for
ever the awful crime in which his last
moments had been spent. For years the
chamber stood unoccupied; but when,
after the lapse of a long time, stress of
company made it necessary to use it, a
strange confirmation of their faith was
given to the superstitious.

224 Harper's Novelettes

The solitary occupant, who had retired
the night before apparently in good
health, was found dead in bed the next
morning. There were not wanting those
who affirmed that on his throat were the
purple marks which testified to the pres
ence of the midnight strangler. However
that may have been, within the next
thirty years three more deaths occurred
in the same mysterious manner, and at
the time of the last so great was the
popular horror that not only was the
room itself condemned as " accursed,"
but the whole building, now very ruinous,
was abandoned, and a new one erected
nearer the street. It was many years
since the old room had been occupied
when we took possession of it, and the
temptation to the landlord to keep be
neath his roof the two Americans, who
to his eyes were simply mines of future
wealth, had proved too strong to be over
come. He had salved his conscience by
arguing that the tales about the room
were a parcel of foolish superstitions not
worthy the notice of any man of the
world, and, in addition, that wo were safe
at any rate, since the evil spirit, if it still
haunted those walls, could attack only in
the darkness, while we were not only pro
vided with abundant means of illumina-

The Inn of San Jadnto 225

tion, but had had clearly impressed upon
us the importance of using them.

And now you know what has really
been the matter with Harry Felters. He
has never fully recovered since that night.
It took me a year or two to get over the
shock, but he never did. Whether there
was some actual physical injury done to
him, or whether the fright made too deep
an impression on his nerves ever to bo
effaced, I cannot tell you. But from
that time to this he has remained ailing,
and good for nothing, though most of
the time he is reasonable and composed.
He is subject, though, to occasional vio
lent attacks of terror. But these come on
him only in the dark, and if you have
ever spent any time with him you will
remember with what elaborate precau
tions he surrounds himself against be
ing left even for a moment without light.
He is a wreck.

Tio Juan

BY MAURICE KINGSLET

little human, lie ain't no
bigger nor a flittermouse ! Let
him in here, you long-legged,
sleek-hided Pedro, you! Come here, son
ny. What ails ye?" And Diamond
Brand Bill, alias Bill, alias William Ir-
win, whilom King of the Mexico-Texan
border, " uncoiled " part of his length
from the monte game, and motioning
aside the others, beckoned up to his knee
— where it stood, a little unclad brown
figure — a boy of scarce ten years old.

There was nothing strange in such an
apparition at the famous monte deal at
Ojo Oaliente just after the big "round
up " of the Encinillas Valley. General
Terazas, owner of the valley, and ex-Gov
ernor of the state of Chihuahua, had or
dered the " round-up," and to it came all
the wild characters of the border. The
Apaches were pretty bad at the time, but
what did that matter?

Tfo Juan 227

" We're a short time living, and a long
time dead," as Bill sagely remarked; and
consequently under the western branches
of the willows that fringed the clear
stream welling out from the hill-side —
the only water for miles round — sat or
lounged a miscellaneous throng.

The monte table was only a sarape
spread on the arid yellow dust of the
sand waste — not very inviting; but the
fame of the Terazas " round-up " had
gone forth far and wide, and at it might
be seen many a well-known Southwestern
face. Even Denver had sent clown Gen
tleman Jim, a poor cousin, and decidedly
lower type, of our old friend " Mr. John
Oakhurst."

El Paso was represented by a would-
be-respectable Jew; but whose diamond-
studded fingers had been a leetle — just a
leetle — too well known in Leadville the
year before.

From Chihuahua came a young gen
tleman got up in all the gorgeous para
phernalia of Mexican ranchero dress — a
black jacket laden down with silver
buckles and clasps; an equally magnifi
cent pair of trousers, so tight-fitting at
knee, calf, and ankle that they seemed to
have " growed on him when he was
young." These topped by a sombrero

228 Harper's Novelettes

bedight and begirt with gold braid, gold
lace, and gold fringe. However, these
gems of the gambling nobility were few
and far between; almost all were Mexi
can and border vaqueros in native pictu-
rcsqueness of buckskins and heavy goat
or jaguar skin overalls, sitting cross-
legged and saturnine, whose only motion
was to fling aside the enveloping sarape
and " rake down " or " put up " " onzas,"
five-dollar bills, or little piles of silver
dollars clean and bright from the Chi
huahua mint. Outside of the calls of
the game— "Rey en la Puerta!" " Copo
al siete!" etc., etc.— hardly a word was
uttered. The great game of the meet
ing had just been lost and won, and
even Bill was thankful for a change,
when he espied the strange figure across
the sarape.

^ All, possibly, in the front row had no
ticed the face, but no attention was paid
to it till Bill's exclamation, and across
the sarape glided the little brown figure,
clad only in an old sheepskin tied round
the neck, which, after resting a trembling
hand on his knee, looked first into his
kindly face, and then glared hollow-eyed
round the circle as might some wild
animal.

Not till then was any real interest

Tfo Juan 229

aroused, and a chorus of "Who is he?"
"What is it?" "Where does he come
from?" broke out in tones betokening
more a sense of coining danger than of
surprise.

" What is it, sonny ?" again asked Bill,
patting the matted black-brown head.

" Tio Juan," whispered the child. " He
is dead ! The Brujo came and stampeded
the sheep and goats, and I hid — and — and
— and — " sbbbed the child.

"The Brujo! Who the devil's he?
And how did Tio Juan die, you poor lit
tle starved sinner? Here you, Pedro,
there, get some water and a tortilla. The
child's 'most dead of drought, and has little
drum's that ' cinched up ' it hain't had no
more in it nor a cayote these three days,
I'll bet! Why, gosh dern my buckskins
if the child hain't fainted I"

As Bill took the body in his arms and
strode through the crowd to the adobe
ranch, twenty-five yards away, in search
of some of the "wimrnin folk," many
were the conjectures hazarded as to what
had happened. The child was a stranger,
evidently half dead of hunger and
thirst; but whence or where? Who was
Tio Juan, and how he had died, no one
could imagine, till some one said, "Los
Apaches."

230 Harper's Novelettes

The Apaches! The words were hardly
spoken when every hand felt for its ac
customed weapon, and a hasty look was
given round the evening horizon of long
dead plain northward, followed by a gen
eral movement towards the horses in or
tied outside the corral ; while those whose
tamer mounts were trying to pick up a
scant living in the sage-brush started on
a run to bring them in.

"Los Apaches! Los Apaches!" ran
from mouth to mouth, and not a man
among them but remembered some per
sonal encounter, or sad tales of the long
haired devils swooping down on to a
friend's ranch and away again, to leave
behind nor trace nor sign save a scene too
revoltingly brutal to tell. And few pres
ent but cursed the " round-up," and its
subsequent three days' gamble and de
bauch, at the thought of wives and chil
dren on many a lone ranch of northern
Chihuahua that might be pasturing the
little flock of goats and brown-woolled
sheep this evening, or — ?

" Vamonos ! Let us go ! To the ranch
es !" was the cry. " Hold on ! Hold on !
Who said it was the Apaches? Let's see
Bill! Let's see the child first! Per
haps it is only a scare!" And they
crowded into the ranch to find the poor

Tfo Juan 231

child lying at the end of the room, while
the Big Bill— Bill, that terror of men-
was bathing its head as tenderly as the
Mexican woman in whose lap it lay
moaning.

Not till near morning could the little
thing give its story, and then only in
disjointed fragments; but with such ef
fect that at sunup fifty well-armed men
were mounted and away under Diamond
Brand Bill to avenge the murder of Tio
Juan.

^Of all the dreary lives that God in His
wisdom has allotted to mortals, dull and
unchanging from day to day, on the
dreariest wastes of this continent the
worst by far is that of the Mexican sheep-
herder, whether on the American or
Spanish side of the border, from southern
Colorado to Zacatecas. To such a life
had Tio Juan been born ; in such he had
existed (one can hardly say " lived ") for
sixty years, pasturing his master's herd
of long-legged black, white, and mottled
sheep and many-colored goats, oblivious
of all save his herd. A human pariah
by force of circumstances, not from
other cause; making his little camp
of brush where grass was earliest in
spring, and moving slowly to more shel-

232 Harper's Novelettes

tered quarters in the fall, only to move
again the next spring. Months might
pass and he would never see a strange
human face.

One afternoon, close to the Laguna de
los Patos, a squad of Gringo cavalry,
guided by Mexicans, came up to him sud
denly as he was waking from siesta, and
he learned that the Apaches had been
raiding along the border, and that a war
of extermination against them had been
waging for a year around him.

His son had become his helper, had
died, and a grandson — our little waif
who broke up the monte game at Ojo
Caliente — had only been brought into
the world, 'twould seem, to follow, in his
turn, the unending round of lifeless life,
with the old man among the sheep and
goats on that wide desert.

He was only a little animal, herding
with the beasts he herded, and with as
little knowledge of an outside world. All
he felt was the great plain below, broken
in places by rocky hills and mesas, and
the great sky above ; and the sensations —
alas! too often realized — of heat, cold,
hunger, and thirst. He burrowed under
the scant branches of a low sage-bush to
escape the noonday glare; and watched,
panting, the great yellow columns of

TIO Juan 233

sand whirls towering skyward, wander
ing to and fro across the desert; and put
up a prayer of thanks that the herd was
lying quietly round him to "La Santisi-
ma Virgen " ; of whom he had vaguely
heard as a beautiful lady in the cathedral
of Chihuahua. Half an hour after, look
ing at his nearly empty gourd of warm,
semiputrid water, he shook it to see if it
would last out the day, and wondered
why, away under the eastern sky, should
appear and disappear, yet not exist in
truth, those wide pools and lagoons of
clear water, with animals standing among
the reeds on the banks — such lagoons as
Tio Juan had told him was the " La-
guna de los Patos," miles to the north
ward, whence every year, just before
the cold season, his grandfather brought
a bundle of reeds to weave into a rough
mat for a sparse shelter from the
cold Norther sweeping down over the
plain, and driving herder and herded
shivering to the lee side of the rocks,
where all snuggled together for mutual
warmth.

Hunger ! How well he knew it ! 'Twas
bad enough every day tramping weary
and often foot - sore behind the sheep,
munching at intervals a piece of dry tor
tilla; but worse, every three months,

16

234 Harper's Novelettes

when Tio Juan ovorstaid his time drink
ing at Ojo Caliente and forgot the poor
boy eking out the last of the tortillas and
frijoles and counting each morsel as it
disappeared. Tio Juan, though, was very
kind, and they had lots to eat for a
month or so when the old man came back
again.

He wag almost companionless. The
two shaggy short-tailed dogs, Lobo and
Linda, bearlike and wolfish, did not make
very good friends.

What he did really like were the fluffy
long-eared white and gray jack - rabbits
with black boots, which danced queer
dances on their hind legs among the
sage-brush every April.

Coyotes, the only other denizens of the
waste, he hated naturally. They slunk
through the brush, one ear cocked, the
other dropped cunningly, picking up the
toads, lizards, and beetles that ought to
have served Lobo and Linda for supper.
And if a lamb chanced to be left behind,
and neither one of the old he-goats or the
dogs scented them, they cut its throat
and drank the hot blood, and then came
to camp at night, wailing, chuckling,
chattering, in hideous glee. They were
the Brujos (witches) of the desert — chil
dren, Tio Juan said, of the great " cattle

Tio Jtian 235

devil,"* who, when the vaqueros were ly
ing asleep by their cattle, would creep
silently up to a bullock, and whisper
something in its ear that started it in
sudden fright, and in a second more the
whole herd would dash madly over the
plain in wild unreasoning stampede,
regardless of watch-fires, vaqueros, and
horses trampled out of existence at the
cruel bidding of the " cattle devil."

Such and such like had been the daily
round of life and thought of our poor
little waif from four years old till about
ten days before our story opens, when he
was lying under a sheepskin one morn
ing on the open plain, and watching the
figure of Tio Juan, half lying, half sit
ting, by the fire of sage roots sputtering
under the gray dawn, with Lobo and Lin
da yawning on the other side.

Hist! What is it? The dogs listen,
and spring up growling; the flock is
aroused and on foot; a dull noise 'way
out in the darkness! What can it be?

* This is a universal superstition among
the vaqueros, inspired, probably, from the
suddenness of stampedes, which mostly hap
pen without known cause or reason. The
" cattle devil " of the cowboy is called " Bru-
jo de Los Ganados" (witch of the flocks) by
Mexicans.

236 Harper's Novelettes

No cattle are pasturing near, yet it
sounds like the gallop of cattle or horses.
A moment more, and then a wild exclama
tion from his grandfather, " Run, my
son! run! To the rocks! Away — hide,
and don't come out till I call! Away!"
All is commotion, and the child dives
and doubles through the brush and cac
tus for a mile to the rocky point at the
mouth of the canon, into which he bur
rows like a rock-rabbit, too frightened to
know or listen to what is happening
behind.

Anxiously he waits Tio Juan's call.
The gray rocks begin to glow with light.
The mesas each side of the canon grow
yellow, red, and then white under the
summer sun. 'Tis weary waiting. lie is
hungry and thirsty, and the sun now
strikes down from directly overhead.
Only in the crevice he has chosen is a
little nook of shade, growing less and
less, less and less.

The sun is westerning now, and the
heat from the rocks unbearable. More he
cannot stand; and so, faint and fright
ened, he peeps over the rocks and across
the plain.

Mustering courage, he creeps over
rock after rock, and then, taking advan
tage of every little shrub, glides out tow-

Tio Juan 237

ards the place he had left before dawn.
By the way he finds a few sheep, and
drives them tremblingly on; but close to
camp an old ewe in the lead stops short,
stamps, and with a frightened bleat scur
ries off to the right, followed by the
others. 'Tis no use chasing them, and
with a growing fear of disaster, he creeps
straight forward. What is that shaggy
brown thing lying under a shrub ? What
is snarling beyond? Another step; ho
sees it is old Lobo, stiff and grinning in
death. He pulls the little knife from his
girdle, puts a stone in his sling, and soon
can make out the deserted camp-fire, by
which coyotes are tearing at two dead
sheep. There are others beyond. The
fire is out, and by the little broken-down
arbor of branches he finds the frijol pot
upturned and empty. The brush is
trampled down all round. Where is Tio
Juan? He calls aloud. A sheep bleats
here and there in answer; coyotes chat
ter and howl. He calls Linda and waits.
Lobo is dead, and there is no Tio Juan,
no Linda ! Perhaps they are getting to
gether the flock scattered by the Brujo.
He will run down to the pool to get some
water, and cook something against their
return. Those two sheep the coyotes
were eating will make a good roast, and

238 Harper's Novelettes

the Patron always allows Tio Juan to cat
the sheep killed by mischance. The pool
is all trampled in with hoof-marks, and
it is hard work to fill his little gourd and
pot. Returning, he takes the flint and
steel from his waistband, and soon has a
fire started with some sage-brush roots.
But on pulling back the boughs of the
arbor to get at the corn and frijoles —
Why, what is this? The hole in which
they were stored is open and empty!
Hardly a grain of either remains, and
yet it is a full month before Tio Juan
can go again to Ojo Caliente to draw
more rations/ Where can Tio Juan be?
The flock must be dreadfully scattered
by the Brujo. He will cache the meat in
the hole, and round up all of them he can.

By nightfall he has perhaps one-fourth
of them collected together, though he has
seen many more out on the plain, but
too far off to follow that night. Start
ing the fire again, he lies down by it to
wait Tio Juan's coming.

What can have happened to Tio Juan ?
He was so wise. He knew all the trails
far south to Chihuahua, and away up the
great road to the Medanos (sand dunes),
and where the first grass grew in the
spring, and the best shelters and latest
grass in the fall.

Tio Juan 239

There was no use waiting longer,
though, that night, so the half-famished
lad broils a piece of meat, and lies down
to doze till about midnight, when the
coyotes return, chattering and snarling,
and have to be driven away, and the
sheep quieted down again.

The moon is going down, and it is
very lonely. Even the pale moon was
something cheering. And now there is
nothing but the cold white stars, blinking
like Brujos' eyes.

At last there only remained one little
morsel of sheep meat. Nearly three-
quarters of the whole flock had been
rounded up. To stay here was to starve.
To-morrow he would drive them south
ward, through the canon into the Enci-
nillas Valley, and borrow something to
eat from the nearest ranch till Tio Juan
came back.

There was nothing to pack up next
morning. The frijol pot, his gourd, flint
and steel, and sling were all his Lares
and Penates. The last bit of meat had
been eaten overnight; and, breakfastless,
the boy at dawn headed the flock towards
the canon. They were not accustomed to
feed that way, and gave trouble; the
goats especially, racing over the point of
rocks and turning back on to the plain.

240 Harper's Novelettes

At last a steady old ewe headed up the
pass, a few more followed her, and then
the mass of the herd, while the goats
skirted the sides of the canon, jumping
from rock to rock.

What would Tio Juan, say if he came
back and did not find them ? 'Twould be
best to leave the flock at the head of the
valley, and hurry on alone, so as to get
back to camp, if possible, next evening.

The canon closes in, and the gray west
ern wall lights up under the sun in
dazzling whiteness. What is that black
thing at the head of the pass, hanging
on the face of the rock ? There is an old
dead maguey-plant in a crevice just over
it at the top of the wall. What can that
black thing be? Ho creeps nearer and
nearer. Holy Virgin ! It is a man's body
tied by one ankle to the maguey, and
hanging over the cliff. Who can it be?
Nearer and nearer he crouches. His
heart stops beating. That old sheepskin
waist-cloth he knows well. Can it be?
Yes, it is — my God, it is! — Tio Juan
hanging there dead!

With a wild wailing cry the boy turned
and fled down the pass and out on to the
wide plain northward, without an idea of
where he was going in his grievous hor
ror, till the project at last began shaping

Tio Juan 241

itself in his small brain to reach Ojo Ca-
liente, and get the people there to come
back and bury Tio Juan.

From the miscellaneous crowd gath
ered round the sarape at Ojo Caliente an
equally motley one started down the big
road southward next morning to find the
body of Tio Juan, under command of old
Bill Irwin.

The canon was reached by evening;
and there, sure enough, was the brown
body hanging, ghastly, against the white
cliff. A couple of riatas were knotted
together, and the poor corpse, baked and
shrivelled in the fierce heat of that oven-
like atmosphere, was passed down to those
below.

'Twas no " cattle devil " conceived such
a death. One ankle, cut through flesh
and sinew to the very bone, sustaining
the whole weight of the body by the raw
hide dangling from the old maguey-
plant, showed it had been suspended
there alive. This was Apache work. Well
did they know his trade-marks!

It was turned over carefully, nay, rev
erently ; and then the mummy form, with
eyeless sockets and drawn parchment-
like skin, drained of blood and moisture,
was placed under a pile of stones by the

242 Harper's Novelettes

roadside, surmounted by a rude cross,
that each passing Mexican might heap a
stone and say an "Ave" over the grave
of Tio Juan, and each vaquero might
echo the words of Diamond Brand Bill
as he musingly turned away:

" Trail branded for the kingdom
come !"

Jamie the Kid

BY JOSIAH FLYNT

IT was my last night in San Francisco,
and I could not leave without saying
good-by to Old Slim. Plis place was
almost empty when I strolled in, and he
was standing behind his greasy bar
counting the day's winnings. The adios
was soon said, and I started for the street
again. I had hardly left the bar when
the door suddenly squeaked on its rick
ety hinges, and a one-armed man came in
with a handsome " kid." He was evi
dently dying of consumption, and as he
shuffled clumsily across the floor, with the
boy following solemnly at his heels, I
fancied that he wanted Slim to help him
into a hospital. He called for his drinks,
and asked Slim if he knew of any one
" bound East " the next day.

" W'y, yes," Slim replied ; " that young
feller right back o' ye leaves ter-morrer:
ain't that right, Cigarette?"

244 Harper's Novelettes

The man turned and looked at me.
Grabbing my hand, he exclaimed:

" Well, I'll be jiggered ! Where d'yu'
come from? Don't remember me, eh?
W'y, ye little beggar, have yu' forgotten
the time we nearly croaked in that box
car jus' out of Austin — have yu' forgot
ten that?" and he pinched my fingers as
if to punish me.

I scrutinized him closely, trying to
trace in his withered and sickened face
the familiar countenance of my old
friend Denver Red.

" Yes, that's right, guy me !" he retort
ed, nervously. "I've changed a little, I
know. But look at this arm" — pushing
back his sleeve from the emaciated hand
— "that crucifix ain't changed, is it?
Now d'yu' know me?"

There was no longer any reason for
doubt, for down in Texas I had seen New
Orleans Fatty put that same piece on
his lonely arm. But how changed he
was ! The last time we met he was one of
the healthiest hoboes on the " Santa Fe,"
and now he could just barely move about.

"Why, Red," I asked, "how did this
happen? You're nearly dead."

" Slcepin' out done it, I guess," he an
swered, hoarsely. "Anyhow, the crocus*
* Doctor.

Jamie the Kid 245

says so, 'n' I s'pose he knows. Can't get
well, neither. Ben all over — Hot Springs,
Yellarstone, Yosem'ty, 'n' jus' the other
day come up from Mex'co. Cough like
a horse jus' the same. But say, Cig,
drink out, 'n' we'll go up to Jake's — 's too
public here. I've got a lot to tell yu', 'n'
a big job fer yu', too: '11 yu' come? A'
right. So long, Slim; I'll be in agen
ter-morrer."

We were soon seated in a back room
at Jake's. The boy stretched himself on
a bench, and in a moment was asleep.

"Purty kid, ain't he?" Red said, look
ing proudly at the little fellow.

"An' he's a perfect bank, too, 'f yu'
train 'im right. Yu' oughto seen 'im
over in Sac* the other day. He drove
some o' them Eastern stiffs nearly wild
with the way he throws his feet. Give
'im good weather an' a lot o' women, 'n'
he'll batter his tenner ev'ry day. They
get sort o' stuck on 'im somehow, 'n' 'fore
they know it they're shellin' out. Quar
ters ev'ry time, too. He don't take no
nickels — seems to hate 'em. A Los An
geles woman tried him once, 'n' what
d'yu' think he did? Told 'er to put it in
an orphan 'sylum. Oh, he's cute, bet cher

* Sacramento.

246 Harper's Novelettes

life. But, Cig," and his voice dropped to
a lower pitch, " he's homesick. Think of
it, will yu', a hobo kid homesick! Bawls
like the devil sometimes. Wants to see
his ma — he's only twelve V a half, see?
If 'e was a homely kid, I'd kick 'im. If
there's en'thing I can't stand, it's homely
bawlin' kids. They make me sick. But
yu' can't kick him — he's too purty — ain't
he?" and he glanced at the slumberer.

"Yu' pull out at seven, do yu'?" he
asked, after a pause.

" Well, Cig, I'm mighty glad it's you I
found at Slim's. I was hopin' I'd meet
some bloke I knew, but I feared I
wouldn't. They're mos' all dead, I guess.
Bummin' does seem to kill us lads, don't
it? Ev'ry day I hear o' some stiff croakin'
or gettin' ditched. It's a holy fright.
Yer bound fer York, ain't yu', Cig?
Well, now, see here; I've got an errand
feryu'. What d'yu' think 't is? Give it
'up, I s'pose ? Well, yu' see that kid over
there; purty, ain't he?" and he walked
over to the bench and looked into the
lad's face.

"Pounds his ear* like a baby, don't
he?" and he passed his hand delicately
over the boy's brow.

* Sleeps.

Jamie the Kid 247

" Now, Gig," lie continued, retuming
to his seat, " I want — you — to — take —
this— kid— back— to— the— Horn.* That's
where he lives. What d'yu' say?"

There was only one thing I could say.
A few months more at the outside and
Red would be gone, and it was probably
the last favor I could do him in payment
for the many kindnesses he had shown
me in the early days.

"If en'thing happens to 7im, Cig, w'y,
it's got to happen, I s'pose; but he's so
dead stuck on seein' his ma that I guess
he'll be purty foxy. I'd take 'im myself,
but I'm 'fraid I can't pull through. It's
a tough trip 'tween here V Omaha, V I
guess he'll be safer with you. I hate to
let 'im go at all, but the devil of it is I
'ain't got the nerve to hang on to him.
Yu' see, I'm goin' to croak 'fore long —
oh, you don't need to snicker; 't's a fact.
A few more months '11' there'll be one less
hobo lookin' fer set-downs. Yes, Cig,
that's straight. But that ain't the only
reason I'm sendin' the kid home. I

* The Horn is a triangular extension of
the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Rail
way. It begins at Red Oak, Iowa, and runs
southwest from there for about twenty miles,
and then northwest to Pacific Junction for
about twenty more.

248 Harper's Novelettes

oughto sent 'im home 'bout a year ago,
V I said I would, too, 'f I found 'im. I
lied, didn't I? Ye-es, sir, 'bout twelve
months ago I told his mother I'd fetch
'im back 'f I collared 'im. How's, that
fer a ghost-story, eh? Wouldn't the
blokes laugh, though, if they'd hear it?
Denver Red takin' a kid home! Sounds
funny, don't it? But that's jus' what I
said I'd do, 'n' I wasn't drunk nuther.
Fill up yer schooner, Gig, 'n' I'll tell yu'
'bout it."

He braced himself against the wall,
hugged his knees, and told me what fol
lows.

"Yu' know where the Horn is right
'nough, don't yu'? Well, 'bout a year 'n'
a half ago I got ditched there one night
in a little town not far from the main
line. 'Twas rainin' like the devil, V I
couldn't find an l empty ' anywheres.
Then I tried the barns, but ev'ry one of
'em was locked tighter'n a penitentiary.
That made me horstile, 'n' I went into
the main street an' tackled a bloke fer a
quarter. He wouldn't give me none, but
'e told me 'f I wanted a lodgin' that a
woman called College Jane 'ud take me
in. Says he: ' Go up this street till yu'
strike the academy; then cross the field,
'n' purty soon yu'll find a little row o'

Jamie the Kid 249

brown houses, V in No. 3 is where Jane
lives. Yu' can't miss the house, 'cause
there's a queer sign hangin' over the
front door, with a ball o' yarn 'n' a big
needle painted on it. She does mendin'.
I guess she'll take yu' in. She always
does, anyhow.' Course I didn't know
whether he was lyin' or not — yu' can
never trust them lioosiers — but I went
up jus' the same, 'n' purty soon, sure
'nough, I struck the house. I knocked,
'n' in a minnit I heerd some one sayin',
' Is that you, Jamie ?' Course that wasn't
my name, but I thought like lightniii', V
made up my mind that 'twas my name in
the rain, anyhow. So I says in a kid's
voice, ' Yes, it's Jamie.' The door opened,
'11' there was one o' the peartest little
women y'ever see.

"'Oh, I thought yu' wasn't Jamie,'
she says. ( Come in — come in. Yu' must
be wet.'

" I felt sort o' sheepish, but went in,
?n' she set me down in the dinin'-room.
Then I told 'er a story. One o' the best
I ever told, I guess — made 'er eyes run,
anyhow. An' she fed me with more pie
'n' cake than I ever had in my life. Re
minded me o' the time we thought we
was drunk on apple pie in New England.
Well, then she told me her story.
17

250 Harper's Novelettes

'Twa'n't much, but somehow I 'ain't for
gotten it yet. Yu' see, she come from the
soil, 'n' her man was a carpenter. After
they'd ben West 'bout six years he up
V died, leavin' her a little house V a
kid. She called 'im Jamie. Course she
had to live somehow, 'n' purty soon she
got a job mendin' fer the 'cademy lads,
'n' she boarded some of 'em. That's the
way she got her monikey.* See? Well,
things went along purty well, '11' she was
spectin' to put the kid in the 'cademy
'fore long. He-e-e didn't like books very
well — hung around the station mos' the
time. Sort o' stuck on the trains, I
s'pose. Lots o' kids like that, yu' know.
Well, to wind up the business, one night
when he was 'bout 'leven year old be
sloped. Some bloke snared 'im, prob'ly,
an' ever since she's ben waitin' 'n' wait-
in' fer 'im to come back. An' ev'ry night
she fixes up his bed, 'n' 'f anybody knocks
she always asks, 'Is that you, Jamie?'
Eunny, ain't it? Well, somehow the
bums got on to 'er, 'n' ever since the kid
mooched she's ben entertaining 'em.
Gives them his room ev'ry time. An' she
always asks 'em 'f they know where he is.
She asked me too, 'n' made me promise 'f

* Nickname.

Jamie the Kid 251

I found 'im that I'd send 'im home.
Course I never expected to see 'im, but
I had to say somethin'.

" Well, sir, six months afterward I was
sittin' in Sal's place in K. C.* when who
should come in but New York Barcas.
He called me out, V says, <Ked, wanto
buy a kid?' As it happened, I did want
one, so I asked 'im how much 'e wanted.
He took me over to a joint V showed
me that kid over there on that bench.
' Give yu' a sinker,' I said. He was satis
fied, 'n' I took the kid.

" Well, sir, as luck would have it, 'bout
a week later the kid got so stuck on me
that he told me his story. I didn't know
what to do. He didn't wanto go home,
'n' I didn't want 'im to. Course I didn't
tell 'im nothin' 'bout seein' his ma — that
?ud 'a' spoiled ev'rything. Well, I didn't
say nothin' more about it, 'n' we come
, out here. I've had 'im now fer 'bout a
' year, 'n' I've trained 'im dead fine. W'y,
Cig, he's the best kid on the coast. Yes,
he is — but, as I've ben tellin' yu', he's
homesick, 'n' I've got to get 'im back to
the Horn. I'm 'fraid he won't stay there.
He's seen too much o' the road; but I'll
croak jus' a little bit easier from knowin'

* Kansas City.

2 52 Harper's Novelettes

that I sent 'im back. I'd like it if he'd
stay, too; 'cause, to 'fess up, Gig, I ain't
very proud o' this bummin', 'n' '£ 'e keeps
at it he'll be jus' like me 'fore long. So
when he wakes up I'm goin' to lecture
?im, 'n' I don't want you to laugh. May
help, you know; can't tell."

Two hours later we were in the rail
way yards waiting for my train to be
made up. There were still about fifteen
minutes left, and Red was lecturing the
kid.

" See here, kid," I heard him saying,
"what's yu' learnt since I've had yu' —
en'thing?"

" Bet cher life I has," the little fellow
returned, with an assumed dignity that
made even Red smile.

" Well, how much ? Rattle it off now,
quick !"

The boy began to count on his fin
gers:

"Batterin', one; sloppin' up, two;
three-card trick, three; an' — an' — that
song 'n' dance, four — four; an' — an' en-
halin' cig'rettes, five — five — " Here he
stopped and asked if he should take the
next hand.

"Yes, go on; let's have the hull of
it."

" Well, then, I knows that cuss-word

Jamie the Kid 253

you taught me — that long one, you know
—that's six, ain't it? Oh yes, V I knows
that other cuss-word that that parson
told us was never forgiven — remember,
don't you? Well, that's seven — seven. I
guess that's about all — jus' an even
seven."

"Ye sure that's all, kid?"

" Well, darn it, Eed, ain't that enough
fer a prushun? You don't know much
more yerself — 110, you don't, V you 's
three times old 's I am." And he began
to pout.

" Now, kid, d'yu' know what I wants
yu'todo?"

"Bet cher life I do! 'Ain' cher ben
tellin' me fer the las' year? You wants
me to be a blowed-in-the-glass stiff.
Ain't them the words ?"

" No, kid. I've changed my mind. Ye
goin' home now, ain' cher?"

" Jus' fer a little while. I'm comin.'
back to you, ain't I?"

" No, yu' ain't, kid. Yer goin' home
fer good. Cigarette's goin' to take yu',
V yu' mustn't come back. Listenin'?"

" Say, Eed, has you gone bughouse ? I
never heerd you talk like that in my
life."

" See here, kid," and there was a firmer
tone in his voice, "we ain't foolin' now

254 Harper's Novelettes

— understan' ? An' in about five minutes
ye'll be gone. Now I wants yu' to prom
ise tbat ye'll ferget ev'ry darn thing I've
taught yu'. Listenin'?"

The kid was gazing down the track.

"Listenin'?" Red cried again.

The kid turned and looked at him.
"Can't I enhale cig'rettes any more?
Has I got to ferget them too ?"

"Well, kid, yu' Un tell yer mother
that I says yu' kin do that— but that's
all. Now '11 yu' promise?"

"Gosh, Red, it '11 be hard work!"

" Can't help it— yu' got to do it. Yu'
don't wanto be like me. Yu' wanto be
somethin' dead fine — 'spectable."

"Am' chew somethin' dead fine? I
heerd Frisco Shorty say oncet you was
the fliest bloke in yer line west o' Den

ver."

"Yu' don't understan', kid," and he
stamped his foot. "I mean like yer
mother. Listenin'? Well, '11 yu' prom
ise?"

The kid nodded his head, but there was
a surprise in his eyes which he could not
conceal.

The train was at last ready, and we
had to be quick.

" Well, Cig, so long ; take care o' yer-
self. Be good to the kid."

Jamie the Kid 255

Then lie turned to the boy. It was
the tenderest good-by I have ever seen
'tween a "prushun" and his "jocker."
A kiss — a gentle stroke on his shoul
der — ancl he helped him climb into the
box-car.

The last we saw of Ked, as we stood at
the door while the engine puffed slowly
out of the yards, he was standing on a
pile of ties waving his hat. Six months
afterward I was told in the Bowery that
he was dead.

The journey to the Horn was full of
incident. For six long days and nights
we railroaded and railroaded, sometimes
on the trucks and the blind baggage, and
again lying flat on top, dodging the cin
ders as they whizzed about our heads,
and the brakeman as he came skipping
over the cars to tax us for the ride. It
was hard work, and dangerous too, at
times, but the kid never whimpered.
Once he wanted to, I thought, when a
conductor kicked him off the caboose, but
he faked a professional little laugh in
place of it. And he also looked rather
frightened one night when he nearly lost
his grip climbing up the ladder of a
cattle-car, but he was afterward so
ashamed that it was almost pitiful. He
was the " nerviest " child I ever travelled

256 Harper's Novelettes

with. Even on the trucks, where old na
tives sometimes feel squeamish, he dis
guised his fear. But he was at his best
at meal-time. Regularly he would plant
himself before me in waiter fashion, and
say:

" Well, Cig'rette, what's it to be? Beef
steak V taters V a little pic— '11 that
do?"

Or if he thought I was not having
enough variety he would suggest a more
delicate dish.

"How'll a piece o' chicken taste, eh?"
And the least eagerness on my part sent
him off to find it. It was not, however,
an entirely one-sided affair, for I was in
his service also. I had to protect him
from all the hoboes we met, and some
times it was not so easy as one might
think. He was so handsome and clever
that it was a temptation to any tramp to
"snare" him if he could, and several
wanted to buy him outright.

"I'll give ye five balls fer ?im," one
old fellow told me, and others offered
smaller sums. A Southern roadster tried
to get him free of cost, and the tales he
told him and the way he told them would
have done honor to a professional story
teller. Luckily for me, the kid was con
siderably smarter than the average boy

Jamie the Kid 257

on the road, and lie had also had much
experience.

" They's got to tell better short stories
than them 'fore they get me!" he ex
claimed, proudly, after several men had
tried their influence on him. " I'm jus'
as cute as they is, ain't I? I know what
they wants — they think I'm a purty good
moocher, V they'll make sinkers out o'
me. Ain't that it ?"

None the less, I almost lost him one
night, but it was not his fault. We were
nearing Salt Lake City at the time, and
a big burly negro was riding in our car.
We were both sleepy, and although I re
alized that it was dangerous to close my
eyes with the stranger so near, I could
not help it, and erelong the kid and I
were dozing. The next thing I knew the
train was slowing up, and the kid was
screaming wildly, and struggling in the
arms of the negro as he jumped to the
ground. I followed, and had hardly
reached the track when I was greeted
with these words : " Shut up, or I'll t'row
de kid under de wheels."

The man looked mean enough to do it ;
but I saw that the kid had grabbed him
savagely around the neck, and, feeling
sure that he would not dare to risk his
own life, I closed with him. It was a

258 Harper's Novelettes

fierce tussle, and the trainmen, as they
looked down from the cars and flashed
their lanterns over the scene, cheered and
jeered.

" Sick 'em !" I heard them crying. " Go
it, kid— go it !"

Our train had almost passed us, and
the conductor was standing on the ca
boose, taking a last look at the fight.
Suddenly he bawled out:

"Look out, lads! the express 's
comin' !"

We were standing on the track, and
the negro jumped to the ditch. I snatch
ed the kid from the ground and ran for
the caboose. As we tumbled on to the
steps the " con " laughed.

" Didn't I do that well ?" he said.

I looked up the track, and, lo and be
hold, there was no express to be seen. It
was one of the kind deeds which railway
men are continually doing for knights
of the road.

As we approached the Horn the kid
became rather serious. The first symp
tom I noticed was early one morning
while he was practising his beloved "song
'n' dance." He had been shaking his feet
for some time, and at last broke out lust
ily into a song I had often heard sung
by Jolly crowds at the " hang-out " :

Jamie the Kid 259

" Oli, me an' three bums,
Three jolly old bums,

We live like royal Turks.
We have good luck
In bumming our chuck.

To hell with the man that works!"

After each effort, if perchance there
had been one " big sound " at all like
Bed's, he chuckled to himself: "Oh, I'm
a-gettin' it, bet cher life! Gosh! I wish
Eed was here!" And then he would try
again. This went on for about half an
hour, and he at last struck a note that
pleased him immensely. He was just go
ing to repeat it, and had his little mouth
perked accordingly, when something
stopped him, and he stared at the floor as
if he had lost a dime. He stood there
silently, and I wondered what the matter
could be. I was on the point of speaking
to him, when he walked over to the door
and looked out at the telegraph poles.
Pretty soon he returned to the corner
where I was reading, and settled down
seriously at my side. In a few moments
he was again at the door. He had been
standing in a musing way for some time,
when I saw him reach into his inside
coat pocket and bring out the tattered
bits of pasteboard with which he did his
three-card trick. Unfolding the packet,

260 Harper's Novelettes

he threw the paper on the track, and
then fingered over each card separately.
Four times he pawed them over, going
reluctantly from one to the other. Then,
and before I could fancy what he was
up to, he tossed them lightly into the air,
and followed them with his eye as the
wind sent them flying against the cars.
When he turned around, his hands were
shaking and his face was pale. I cruel
ly pretended not to notice, and asked
him carelessly what was the matter. lie
took another look at the world outside,
as if to see where the cards had gone,
and then came over to the corner again.
Putting his hands in his trousers pockets,
and taking a long draw at his cigarette,
he said, the smoke pouring out of his
nostrils, "I'm tryin' to reform."

He looked so solemn that I did not
dare to laugh, but it was all I could do
to keep from it.

"D'ye think I'll make it go?" he asked,
after a pause, during which his feet had
tried to tempt him from his good resolu
tion, and had almost led him into the for
bidden dance. Almost every hour from
that time on he asked that same question,
and sometimes the childish pathos that
he threw into his voice and manner would
have unmanned an old stager.

Jamie the Kid 261

The last day of our journey we had a
long talk. He was still trying to reform,
but he had come to certain conclusions,
and one of them was that he could not
go to school any more ; or, what was more
to the point, that he did not see the need
of it.

" Course I don't know everything," he
explained, " but I knows a lot. Wy, I
kin beat Red figgerin' a'ready, an' I kin
read things he can't, too. Lots o' words
he don't know 't I does; an' when he's
drunk he can't read at all, but I kin.
You oughto seen us in Cheyenne, Cig."
And the reminiscence made him chuckle.
" We was both jagged, 'n' the copper
served a paper on us, 'n I had to read U
to Red. Ain't that purty good? Red
said 'twas, anyhow, '11' he oughto know,
oughtn't he? No, I don't think I need
much schoolin'. I don't wanto be Presi
dent of the country; 'f I did, p'r'aps I
oughto know some more words; but see-
in's I don't, I can't see the use o' diggin'
in readers all the while. I wish Red had
given me a letter 'bout that, 'cause ma
?n' I'll get to fightm' 'bout it dead sure.
You see, she's stuck on puttin' me tru
the 'cademy, 'n' I'm stuck on keepin' out
of it, 'n' 'f we get to scrappin' agen I'm
afraid I won't reform. She'll kick 'bout

262 Harper's Novelettes

my smokin', too; but I've got her there,
ain't I? Red said I could smoke, didn't
'e— h'm? Tell ye what I guess I'll do,
Gig. Jus' after I've kissed 'er I'll tell
'er right on the spot jus' what I kin do.
Won't that be a good scheme? Then,
you see, she can't jaw 'bout my not bein'
square, can she ? Yes, sir, that's jus' what
I'll do." And he rubbed his tattooed
hands as if he had made a good bargain.

The next morning, just as the sun was
rising over the prairie - line, our train
switched off the main road, and we were
at last rolling along over the Horn. The
kid stood by the door and pointed out the
landmarks that he remembered. Erelong
he espied the open belfry of the academy.

" See that cup'la, Gig ?" he cried. " Dad
helped to build that, but ?e croaked doin'
it. Some people says that he was jagged,
'cause he tumbled. Ma says the sun
struck 'im."

A few minutes later the train stopped
at the watering-tank, and my errand was
done. There was no need to " jocker "
the boy any longer. His welfare depend
ed upon his mother and his determi
nation to reform. He kissed me good-
by, and then marched manfully up the
silent street toward the academy. I
watched him till the train pulled out.

Jamie the Kid 263

Thus ended one of the hardest trips of
my life in Hobo-land.

One warm summer evening, about
three years after leaving the Horn, I was
sitting in a music-hall in the Bowery. I
had long since given up my membership
in the hobo fraternity, but I liked to
stroll about now and then and visit the
old resorts. And it was while on such an
excursion that I drifted into the variety
show. I watched the people as they
came and went, hoping to recognize some
old acquaintance. I had often had odd
experiences and renewal of friendships
under similar circumstances, and as I
sat there I wondered who it would be
that I should meet that night. The
thought had hardly recorded itself when
some one grabbed my shoulder in police
man style, and said, " Shake !" I looked
around, and found one of the burliest
rowdies in the room. He turned out to
be a pal that I had known on the New
York Central, and, as usual, I had to go
over my remembrances. He also had
yarns to spin, and he brought them so up
to date that I learned he was just free of
a Virginia jail. Then began a tirade
against Southern prisons. As he was
finishing it he happened to remember

264 Harper's Novelettes

that he had met a friend of mine in the
Virginian limbo. " Said 'e knew ye well,
Cig, but I couldn't place 'im. Little
feller; somethin' of a kid, I guess; up
fer thirty days. One o' the blokes called
'im the Horn kid, V said 'e use to be a
fly prushun out in the coast country. Ole
Denver Ked trained 'im, he said. Who
is he? d'ye know ?im? He was a nice
little feller. Why, what's wrong, Gig?
Ye look spilled."

I probably did. It was such a disap
pointment as I had hardly imagined.
Poor kid! He probably did so well that
his mother tried to put him into the
academy, and then he " sloped " once
more. I told the tramp the tale I have
just finished. He was too obtuse to see
the pathetic side of it, but one of his
comments is worth repeating:

" Ye can't do nothin' with them kids,
Cig. After they's turfed it a bit they're
gone. Better let 'em alone."

But I cannot believe that that kind-
hearted little fellow is really gone. Who
ever meets him now, policeman or phi
lanthropist, pray send him back to the
Horn again.

THE END

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

Return to desk from which borrowed.
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