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Title:  Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands

Author:  Bret Harte

April, 2001  [Etext #2597]


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MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS

by Bret Harte




CONTENTS


MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS

HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON'S BAR

THE PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS

THE ILIAD OF SANDY BAR

MR. THOMPSON'S PRODIGAL

THE ROMANCE OR MADRONO HOLLOW

THE POET OF SIERRA FLAT

THE CHRISTMAS GIFT THAT CAME TO RUPERT




MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS.


PART I--WEST.


The sun was rising in the foot-hills.  But for an hour the black
mass of Sierra eastward of Angel's had been outlined with fire, and
the conventional morning had come two hours before with the down
coach from Placerville.  The dry, cold, dewless California night
still lingered in the long canyons and folded skirts of Table
Mountain.  Even on the mountain road the air was still sharp, and
that urgent necessity for something to keep out the chill, which
sent the barkeeper sleepily among his bottles and wineglasses at
the station, obtained all along the road.

Perhaps it might be said that the first stir of life was in the
bar-rooms.  A few birds twittered in the sycamores at the roadside,
but long before that glasses had clicked and bottles gurgled in the
saloon of the Mansion House.  This was still lit by a dissipated-
looking hanging-lamp, which was evidently the worse for having been
up all night, and bore a singular resemblance to a faded reveller
of Angel's, who even then sputtered and flickered in HIS socket in
an arm-chair below it,--a resemblance so plain that when the first
level sunbeam pierced the window-pane, the barkeeper, moved by a
sentiment of consistency and compassion, put them both out together.

Then the sun came up haughtily.  When it had passed the eastern
ridge it began, after its habit, to lord it over Angel's, sending
the thermometer up twenty degrees in as many minutes, driving the
mules to the sparse shade of corrals and fences, making the red
dust incandescent, and renewing its old imperious aggression on the
spiked bosses of the convex shield of pines that defended Table
Mountain.  Thither by nine o'clock all coolness had retreated, and
the "outsides" of the up stage plunged their hot faces in its
aromatic shadows as in water.

It was the custom of the driver of the Wingdam coach to whip up his
horses and enter Angel's at that remarkable pace which the woodcuts
in the hotel bar-room represented to credulous humanity as the
usual rate of speed of that conveyance.  At such times the habitual
expression of disdainful reticence and lazy official severity which
he wore on the box became intensified as the loungers gathered
about the vehicle, and only the boldest ventured to address him.
It was the Hon. Judge Beeswinger, Member of Assembly, who to-day
presumed, perhaps rashly, on the strength of his official position.

"Any political news from below, Bill?" he asked, as the latter
slowly descended from his lofty perch, without, however, any
perceptible coming down of mien or manner.

"Not much," said Bill, with deliberate gravity.  "The President o'
the United States hezn't bin hisself sens you refoosed that seat in
the Cabinet.  The ginral feelin' in perlitical circles is one o'
regret."

Irony, even of this outrageous quality, was too common in Angel's
to excite either a smile or a frown.  Bill slowly entered the bar-
room during a dry, dead silence, in which only a faint spirit of
emulation survived.

"Ye didn't bring up that agint o' Rothschild's this trip?" asked
the barkeeper, slowly, by way of vague contribution to the
prevailing tone of conversation.

"No," responded Bill, with thoughtful exactitude.  "He said he
couldn't look inter that claim o' Johnson's without first
consultin' the Bank o' England."

The Mr. Johnson here alluded to being present as the faded reveller
the barkeeper had lately put out, and as the alleged claim
notoriously possessed no attractions whatever to capitalists,
expectation naturally looked to him for some response to this
evident challenge.  He did so by simply stating that he would "take
sugar" in his, and by walking unsteadily toward the bar, as if
accepting a festive invitation.  To the credit of Bill be it
recorded that he did not attempt to correct the mistake, but
gravely touched glasses with him, and after saying "Here's another
nail in your coffin,"--a cheerful sentiment, to which "And the hair
all off your head," was playfully added by the others,--he threw
off his liquor with a single dexterous movement of head and elbow,
and stood refreshed.

"Hello, old major!" said Bill, suddenly setting down his glass.
"Are YOU there?"

It was a boy, who, becoming bashfully conscious that this epithet
was addressed to him, retreated sideways to the doorway, where he
stood beating his hat against the door-post with an assumption of
indifference that his downcast but mirthful dark eyes and reddening
cheek scarcely bore out.  Perhaps it was owing to his size, perhaps
it was to a certain cherubic outline of face and figure, perhaps to
a peculiar trustfulness of expression, that he did not look half
his age, which was really fourteen.

Everybody in Angel's knew the boy.  Either under the venerable
title bestowed by Bill, or as "Tom Islington," after his adopted
father, his was a familiar presence in the settlement, and the
theme of much local criticism and comment.  His waywardness,
indolence, and unaccountable amiability--a quality at once
suspicious and gratuitous in a pioneer community like Angel's--had
often been the subject of fierce discussion.  A large and reputable
majority believed him destined for the gallows; a minority not
quite so reputable enjoyed his presence without troubling
themselves much about his future; to one or two the evil
predictions of the majority possessed neither novelty nor terror.

"Anything for me, Bill?" asked the boy, half mechanically, with the
air of repeating some jocular formulary perfectly understood by
Bill.

"Anythin' for you!" echoed Bill, with an overacted severity equally
well understood by Tommy,--"anythin' for you?  No!  And it's my
opinion there won't be anythin' for you ez long ez you hang around
bar-rooms and spend your valooable time with loafers and bummers.
Git!"

The reproof was accompanied by a suitable exaggeration of gesture
(Bill had seized a decanter) before which the boy retreated still
good-humoredly.  Bill followed him to the door.  "Dern my skin, if
he hezn't gone off with that bummer Johnson," he added, as he
looked down the road.

"What's he expectin', Bill?" asked the barkeeper.

"A letter from his aunt.  Reckon he'll hev to take it out in
expectin'.  Likely they're glad to get shut o' him."

"He's leadin' a shiftless, idle life here," interposed the Member
of Assembly.

"Well," said Bill, who never allowed any one but himself to abuse
his protege, "seein' he ain't expectin' no offis from the hands of
an enlightened constitooency, it IS rayther a shiftless life."
After delivering this Parthian arrow with a gratuitous twanging of
the bow to indicate its offensive personality, Bill winked at the
barkeeper, slowly resumed a pair of immense, bulgy buckskin gloves,
which gave his fingers the appearance of being painfully sore and
bandaged, strode to the door without looking at anybody, called
out, "All aboard," with a perfunctory air of supreme indifference
whether the invitation was heeded, remounted his box, and drove
stolidly away.

Perhaps it was well that he did so, for the conversation at once
assumed a disrespectful attitude toward Tom and his relatives.  It
was more than intimated that Tom's alleged aunt was none other than
Tom's real mother, while it was also asserted that Tom's alleged
uncle did not himself participate in this intimate relationship to
the boy to an extent which the fastidious taste of Angel's deemed
moral and necessary.  Popular opinion also believed that Islington,
the adopted father, who received a certain stipend ostensibly for
the boy's support, retained it as a reward for his reticence
regarding these facts.  "He ain't ruinin' hisself by wastin' it on
Tom," said the barkeeper, who possibly possessed positive knowledge
of much of Islington's disbursements.  But at this point exhausted
nature languished among some of the debaters, and he turned from
the frivolity of conversation to his severer professional duties.

It was also well that Bill's momentary attitude of didactic
propriety was not further excited by the subsequent conduct of his
protege.  For by this time Tom, half supporting the unstable
Johnson, who developed a tendency to occasionally dash across the
glaring road, but checked himself mid way each time, reached the
corral which adjoined the Mansion House.  At its farther extremity
was a pump and horse-trough.  Here, without a word being spoken,
but evidently in obedience to some habitual custom, Tom led his
companion.  With the boy's assistance, Johnson removed his coat and
neckcloth, turned back the collar of his shirt, and gravely placed
his head beneath the pump-spout.  With equal gravity and
deliberation, Tom took his place at the handle.  For a few moments
only the splashing of water and regular strokes of the pump broke
the solemnly ludicrous silence.  Then there was a pause in which
Johnson put his hands to his dripping head, felt of it critically
as if it belonged to somebody else, and raised his eyes to his
companion.  "That ought to fetch IT," said Tom, in answer to the
look.  "Ef it don't," replied Johnson, doggedly, with an air of
relieving himself of all further responsibility in the matter,
"it's got to, thet's all!"

If "it" referred to some change in the physiognomy of Johnson, "it"
had probably been "fetched" by the process just indicated.  The
head that went under the pump was large, and clothed with bushy,
uncertain-colored hair; the face was flushed, puffy, and
expressionless, the eyes injected and full.  The head that came out
from under the pump was of smaller size and different shape, the
hair straight, dark, and sleek, the face pale and hollow-cheeked,
the eyes bright and restless.  In the haggard, nervous ascetic that
rose from the horse-trough there was very little trace of the
Bacchus that had bowed there a moment before.  Familiar as Tom must
have been with the spectacle, he could not help looking inquiringly
at the trough, as if expecting to see some traces of the previous
Johnson in its shallow depths.

A narrow strip of willow, alder, and buckeye--a mere dusty,
ravelled fringe of the green mantle that swept the high shoulders
of Table Mountain--lapped the edge of the corral.  The silent pair
were quick to avail themselves of even its scant shelter from the
overpowering sun.  They had not proceeded far, before Johnson, who
was walking quite rapidly in advance, suddenly brought himself up,
and turned to his companion with an interrogative "Eh?"

"I didn't speak," said Tommy, quietly.

"Who said you spoke?" said Johnson, with a quick look of cunning.
"In course you didn't speak, and I didn't speak, neither.  Nobody
spoke.  Wot makes you think you spoke?" he continued, peering
curiously into Tommy's eyes.

The smile which habitually shone there quickly vanished as the boy
stepped quietly to his companion's side, and took his arm without a
word.

"In course you didn't speak, Tommy," said Johnson, deprecatingly.
"You ain't a boy to go for to play an ole soaker like me.  That's
wot I like you for.  Thet's wot I seed in you from the first.  I
sez, 'Thet 'ere boy ain't goin' to play you, Johnson!  You can go
your whole pile on him, when you can't trust even a bar-keep.'
Thet's wot I said.  Eh?"

This time Tommy prudently took no notice of the interrogation, and
Johnson went on: "Ef I was to ask you another question, you
wouldn't go to play me neither,--would you, Tommy?"

"No," said the boy.

"Ef I was to ask you," continued Johnson, without heeding the
reply, but with a growing anxiety of eye and a nervous twitching of
his lips,--"ef I was to ask you, fur instance, ef that was a
jackass rabbit thet jest passed,--eh?--you'd say it was or was not,
ez the case may be.  You wouldn't play the ole man on thet?"

"No," said Tommy, quietly, "it WAS a jackass rabbit."

"Ef I was to ask you," continued Johnson, "ef it wore, say, fur
instance, a green hat with yaller ribbons, you wouldn't play me,
and say it did, onless,"--he added, with intensified cunning,--
"onless it DID?"

"No," said Tommy, "of course I wouldn't; but then, you see, IT
DID."

"It did?"

"It did!" repeated Tommy, stoutly; "a green hat with yellow
ribbons--and--and--a red rosette."

"I didn't get to see the ros-ette," said Johnson, with slow and
conscientious deliberation, yet with an evident sense of relief;
"but that ain't sayin' it warn't there, you know.  Eh?"

Tommy glanced quietly at his companion.  There were great beads of
perspiration on his ashen-gray forehead and on the ends of his lank
hair; the hand which twitched spasmodically in his was cold and
clammy, the other, which was free, had a vague, purposeless, jerky
activity, as if attached to some deranged mechanism.  Without any
apparent concern in these phenomena, Tommy halted, and, seating
himself on a log, motioned his companion to a place beside him.
Johnson obeyed without a word.  Slight as was the act, perhaps no
other incident of their singular companionship indicated as
completely the dominance of this careless, half-effeminate, but
self-possessed boy over this doggedly self-willed, abnormally
excited man.

"It ain't the square thing," said Johnson, after a pause, with a
laugh that was neither mirthful nor musical, and frightened away a
lizard that had been regarding the pair with breathless suspense,--
"it ain't the square thing for jackass rabbits to wear hats,
Tommy,--is it, eh?"

"Well," said Tommy, with unmoved composure, "sometimes they do and
sometimes they don't.  Animals are mighty queer."  And here Tommy
went off in an animated, but, I regret to say, utterly untruthful
and untrustworthy account of the habits of California fauna, until
he was interrupted by Johnson.

"And snakes, eh, Tommy?" said the man, with an abstracted air,
gazing intently on the ground before him.

"And snakes," said Tommy; "but they don't bite, at least not that
kind you see.  There!--don't move, Uncle Ben, don't move; they're
gone now.  And it's about time you took your dose."

Johnson had hurriedly risen as if to leap upon the log, but Tommy
had as quickly caught his arm with one hand while he drew a bottle
from his pocket with the other.  Johnson paused, and eyed the
bottle.  "Ef you say so, my boy," he faltered, as his fingers
closed nervously around it; say 'when,' then."  He raised the
bottle to his lips and took a long draught, the boy regarding him
critically.  "When," said Tommy, suddenly.  Johnson started,
flushed, and returned the bottle quickly.  But the color that had
risen to his cheek stayed there, his eye grew less restless, and as
they moved away again, the hand that rested on Tommy's shoulder was
steadier.

Their way lay along the flank of Table Mountain,--a wandering trail
through a tangled solitude that might have seemed virgin and
unbroken but for a few oyster-cans, yeast-powder tins, and empty
bottles that had been apparently stranded by the "first low wash"
of pioneer waves.  On the ragged trunk of an enormous pine hung a
few tufts of gray hair caught from a passing grizzly, but in
strange juxtaposition at its foot lay an empty bottle of
incomparable bitters,--the chef-d'oeuvre of a hygienic
civilization, and blazoned with the arms of an all-healing
republic.  The head of a rattlesnake peered from a case that had
contained tobacco, which was still brightly placarded with the
high-colored effigy of a popular danseuse.  And a little beyond
this the soil was broken and fissured, there was a confused mass of
roughly hewn timber, a straggling line of sluicing, a heap of
gravel and dirt, a rude cabin, and the claim of Johnson.

Except for the rudest purposes of shelter from rain and cold, the
cabin possessed but little advantage over the simple savagery of
surrounding nature.  It had all the practical directness of the
habitation of some animal, without its comfort or picturesque
quality; the very birds that haunted it for food must have felt
their own superiority as architects.  It was inconceivably dirty,
even with its scant capacity for accretion; it was singularly
stale, even in its newness and freshness of material.  Unspeakably
dreary as it was in shadow, the sunlight visited it in a blind,
aching, purposeless way, as if despairing of mellowing its outlines
or of even tanning it into color.

The claim worked by Johnson in his intervals of sobriety was
represented by half a dozen rude openings in the mountain-side,
with the heaped-up debris of rock and gravel before the mouth of
each.  They gave very little evidence of engineering skill or
constructive purpose, or indeed showed anything but the vague,
successively abandoned essays of their projector.  To-day they
served another purpose, for as the sun had heated the little cabin
almost to the point of combustion, curling up the long dry
shingles, and starting aromatic tears from the green pine beams,
Tommy led Johnson into one of the larger openings, and with a sense
of satisfaction threw himself panting upon its rocky floor.  Here
and there the grateful dampness was condensed in quiet pools of
water, or in a monotonous and soothing drip from the rocks above.
Without lay the staring sunlight,--colorless, clarified, intense.

For a few moments they lay resting on their elbows in blissful
contemplation of the heat they had escaped.  "Wot do you say," said
Johnson, slowly, without looking at his companion, but abstractly
addressing himself to the landscape beyond,--"wot do you say to two
straight games fur one thousand dollars?"

"Make it five thousand," replied Tommy, reflectively, also to the
landscape, "and I'm in."

"Wot do I owe you now?" said Johnson, after a lengthened silence.

"One hundred and seventy-five thousand two hundred and fifty
dollars," replied Tommy, with business-like gravity.

"Well," said Johnson, after a deliberation commensurate with the
magnitude of the transaction, "ef you win, call it a hundred and
eighty thousand, round.  War's the keerds?"

They were in an old tin box in a crevice of a rock above his head.
They were greasy and worn with service.  Johnson dealt, albeit his
right hand was still uncertain,--hovering, after dropping the
cards, aimlessly about Tommy, and being only recalled by a strong
nervous effort.  Yet, notwithstanding this incapacity for even
honest manipulation, Mr. Johnson covertly turned a knave from the
bottom of the pack with such shameless inefficiency and gratuitous
unskilfulness, that even Tommy was obliged to cough and look
elsewhere to hide his embarrassment.  Possibly for this reason the
young gentleman was himself constrained, by way of correction, to
add a valuable card to his own hand, over and above the number he
legitimately held.

Nevertheless, the game was unexciting, and dragged listlessly.
Johnson won.  He recorded the fact and the amount with a stub of
pencil and shaking fingers in wandering hieroglyphics all over a
pocket diary.  Then there was a long pause, when Johnson slowly
drew something from his pocket, and held it up before his
companion.  It was apparently a dull red stone.

"Ef," said Johnson, slowly, with his old look of simple cunning,--
"ef you happened to pick up sich a rock ez that, Tommy, what might
you say it was?"

"Don't know," said Tommy.

"Mightn't you say," continued Johnson, cautiously, "that it was
gold, or silver?"

"Neither," said Tommy, promptly.

"Mightn't you say it was quicksilver?  Mightn't you say that ef
thar was a friend o' yourn ez knew war to go and turn out ten ton
of it a day, and every ton worth two thousand dollars, that he had
a soft thing, a very soft thing,--allowin', Tommy, that you used
sich language, which you don't?"

"But," said the boy, coming to the point with great directness, "DO
you know where to get it? have you struck it, Uncle Ben?"

Johnson looked carefully around.  "I hev, Tommy.  Listen.  I know
whar thar's cartloads of it.  But thar's only one other specimen--
the mate to this yer--thet's above ground, and thet's in 'Frisco.
Thar's an agint comin' up in a day or two to look into it.  I sent
for him.  Eh?"

His bright, restless eyes were concentrated on Tommy's face now,
but the boy showed neither surprise nor interest.  Least of all did
he betray any recollection of Bill's ironical and gratuitous
corroboration of this part of the story.

"Nobody knows it," continued Johnson, in a nervous whisper,--
"nobody knows it but you and the agint in 'Frisco.  The boys
workin' round yar passes by and sees the old man grubbin' away, and
no signs o' color, not even rotten quartz; the boys loafin' round
the Mansion House sees the old man lyin' round free in bar-rooms,
and they laughs and sez, 'Played out,' and spects nothin'.  Maybe
ye think they spects suthin now, eh?" queried Johnson, suddenly,
with a sharp look of suspicion.

Tommy looked up, shook his head, threw a stone at a passing rabbit,
but did not reply.

"When I fust set eyes on you, Tommy," continued Johnson, apparently
reassured, "the fust day you kem and pumped for me, an entire
stranger, and hevin no call to do it, I sez, 'Johnson, Johnson,'
sez I,' yer's a boy you kin trust.  Yer's a boy that won't play
you; yer's a chap that's white and square,'--white and square,
Tommy: them's the very words I used."

He paused for a moment, and then went on in a confidential whisper,
"'You want capital, Johnson,' sez I, 'to develop your resources,
and you want a pardner.  Capital you can send for, but your
pardner, Johnson,--your pardner is right yer.  And his name, it is
Tommy Islington.'  Them's the very words I used."

He stopped and chafed his clammy hands upon his knees.  "It's six
months ago sens I made you my pardner.  Thar ain't a lick I've
struck sens then, Tommy, thar ain't a han'ful o' yearth I've
washed, thar ain't a shovelful o' rock I've turned over, but I
tho't o' you.  'Share, and share alike,' sez I.  When I wrote to my
agint, I wrote ekal for my pardner, Tommy Islington, he hevin no
call to know ef the same was man or boy."

He had moved nearer the boy, and would perhaps have laid his hand
caressingly upon him, but even in his manifest affection there was
a singular element of awed restraint and even fear,--a suggestion
of something withheld even his fullest confidences, a hopeless
perception of some vague barrier that never could be surmounted.
He may have been at times dimly conscious that, in the eyes which
Tommy raised to his, there was thorough intellectual appreciation,
critical good-humor, even feminine softness, but nothing more.  His
nervousness somewhat heightened by his embarrassment, he went on
with an attempt at calmness which his twitching white lips and
unsteady fingers made pathetically grotesque.  "Thar's a bill o'
sale in my bunk, made out accordin' to law, of an ekal ondivided
half of the claim, and the consideration is two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars,--gambling debts,--gambling debts from me to you,
Tommy,--you understand?"--nothing could exceed the intense cunning
of his eye at this moment,--"and then thar's a will."

"A will?" said Tommy, in amused surprise.

Johnson looked frightened.

"Eh?" he said, hurriedly, "wot will?  Who said anythin' 'bout a
will, Tommy?"

"Nobody," replied Tommy, with unblushing calm.

Johnson passed his hand over his cold forehead, wrung the damp ends
of his hair with his fingers, and went on: "Times when I'm took bad
ez I was to-day, the boys about yer sez--you sez, maybe, Tommy--
it's whiskey.  It ain't, Tommy.  It's pizen,--quicksilver pizen.
That's what's the matter with me.  I'm salviated!  Salviated with
merkery.

"I've heerd o' it before," continued Johnson, appealing to the boy,
"and ez a boy o' permiskus reading, I reckon you hev too.  Them men
as works in cinnabar sooner or later gets salviated.  It's bound to
fetch 'em some time.  Salviated by merkery."

"What are you goin' to do for it?" asked Tommy.

"When the agint comes up, and I begins to realize on this yer
mine," said Johnson, contemplatively, "I goes to New York.  I sez
to the barkeep' o' the hotel, 'Show me the biggest doctor here.'
He shows me.  I sez to him, 'Salviated by merkery,--a year's
standin',--how much?'  He sez, 'Five thousand dollars, and take two
o' these pills at bedtime, and an ekil number o' powders at meals,
and come back in a week.'  And I goes back in a week, cured, and
signs a certifikit to that effect."

Encouraged by a look of interest in Tommy's eye, he went on.

"So I gets cured.  I goes to the barkeep', and I sez, 'Show me the
biggest, fashionblest house thet's for sale yer.'  And he sez, 'The
biggest, nat'rally b'longs to John Jacob Astor.'  And I sez, 'Show
him,' and he shows him.  And I sez, 'Wot might you ask for this yer
house?'  And he looks at me scornful, and sez, 'Go 'way, old man;
you must be sick.'  And I fetches him one over the left eye, and he
apologizes, and I gives him his own price for the house.  I stocks
that house with mohogany furniture and pervisions, and thar we
lives, you and me, Tommy, you and me!"

The sun no longer shone upon the hillside.  The shadows of the
pines were beginning to creep over Johnson's claim, and the air
within the cavern was growing chill.  In the gathering darkness his
eyes shone brightly as he went on: "Then thar comes a day when we
gives a big spread.  We invites govners, members o' Congress,
gentlemen o' fashion, and the like.  And among 'em I invites a Man
as holds his head very high, a Man I once knew; but he doesn't know
I knows him, and he doesn't remember me.  And he comes and he sits
opposite me, and I watches him.  And he's very airy, this Man, and
very chipper, and he wipes his mouth with a white hankercher, and
he smiles, and he ketches my eye.  And he sez, 'A glass o' wine
with you, Mr. Johnson'; and he fills his glass and I fills mine,
and we rises.  And I heaves that wine, glass and all, right into
his damned grinnin' face.  And he jumps for me,--for he is very
game, this Man, very game,--but some on 'em grabs him, and he sez,
'Who be you?'  And I sez, 'Skaggs! damn you, Skaggs!  Look at me!
Gimme back my wife and child, gimme back the money you stole, gimme
back the good name you took away, gimme back the health you ruined,
gimme back the last twelve years!  Give 'em to me, damn you, quick,
before I cuts your heart out!'  And naterally, Tommy, he can't do
it.  And so I cuts his heart out, my boy; I cuts his heart out."

The purely animal fury of his eye suddenly changed again to
cunning.  "You think they hangs me for it, Tommy, but they don't.
Not much, Tommy.  I goes to the biggest lawyer there, and I says to
him, 'Salviated by merkery,--you hear me,--salviated by merkery.'
And he winks at me, and he goes to the judge, and he sez, 'This yer
unfortnet man isn't responsible,--he's been salviated by merkery.'
And he brings witnesses; you comes, Tommy, and you sez ez how
you've seen me took bad afore; and the doctor, he comes, and he sez
as how he's seen me frightful; and the jury, without leavin' their
seats, brings in a verdict o' justifiable insanity,--salviated by
merkery."

In the excitement of his climax he had risen to his feet, but would
have fallen had not Tommy caught him and led him into the open air.
In this sharper light there was an odd change visible in his
yellow-white face,--a change which caused Tommy to hurriedly
support him, half leading, half dragging him toward the little
cabin.  When they had reached it, Tommy placed him on a rude
"bunk," or shelf, and stood for a moment in anxious contemplation
of the tremor-stricken man before him.  Then he said rapidly:
"Listen, Uncle Ben.  I'm goin' to town--to town, you understand--
for the doctor.  You're not to get up or move on any account until
I return.  Do you hear?"  Johnson nodded violently.  "I'll be back
in two hours."  In another moment he was gone.

For an hour Johnson kept his word.  Then he suddenly sat up, and
began to gaze fixedly at a corner of the cabin.  From gazing at it
he began to smile, from smiling at it he began to talk, from
talking at it he began to scream, from screaming he passed to
cursing and sobbing wildly.  Then he lay quiet again.

He was so still that to merely human eyes he might have seemed
asleep or dead.  But a squirrel, that, emboldened by the stillness,
had entered from the roof, stopped short upon a beam above the
bunk, for he saw that the man's foot was slowly and cautiously
moving toward the floor, and that the man's eyes were as intent and
watchful as his own.  Presently, still without a sound, both feet
were upon the floor.  And then the bunk creaked, and the squirrel
whisked into the eaves of the roof.  When he peered forth again,
everything was quiet, and the man was gone.

An hour later two muleteers on the Placerville Road passed a man
with dishevelled hair, glaring, bloodshot eyes, and clothes torn
with bramble and stained with the red dust of the mountain.  They
pursued him, when he turned fiercely on the foremost, wrested a
pistol from his grasp, and broke away.  Later still, when the sun
had dropped behind Payne's Ridge, the underbrush on Deadwood Slope
crackled with a stealthy but continuous tread.  It must have been
an animal whose dimly outlined bulk, in the gathering darkness,
showed here and there in vague but incessant motion; it could be
nothing but an animal whose utterance was at once so incoherent,
monotonous, and unremitting.  Yet, when the sound came nearer, and
the chaparral was parted, it seemed to be a man, and that man
Johnson.

Above the baying of phantasmal hounds that pressed him hard and
drove him on, with never rest or mercy; above the lashing of a
spectral whip that curled about his limbs, sang in his ears, and
continually stung him forward; above the outcries of the unclean
shapes that thronged about him,--he could still distinguish one
real sound,--the rush and sweep of hurrying waters.  The Stanislaus
River!  A thousand feet below him drove its yellowing current.
Through all the vacillations of his unseated mind he had clung to
one idea,--to reach the river, to lave in it, to swim it if need
be, but to put it forever between him and the harrying shapes, to
drown forever in its turbid depths the thronging spectres, to wash
away in its yellow flood all stains and color of the past.  And now
he was leaping from boulder to boulder, from blackened stump to
stump, from gnarled bush to bush, caught for a moment and withheld
by clinging vines, or plunging downward into dusty hollows, until,
rolling, dropping, sliding, and stumbling, he reached the river-
bank, whereon he fell, rose, staggered forward, and fell again with
outstretched arms upon a rock that breasted the swift current.  And
there he lay as dead.

A few stars came out hesitatingly above Deadwood Slope.  A cold
wind that had sprung up with the going down of the sun fanned them
into momentary brightness, swept the heated flanks of the mountain,
and ruffled the river.  Where the fallen man lay there was a sharp
curve in the stream, so that in the gathering shadows the rushing
water seemed to leap out of the darkness and to vanish again.
Decayed drift-wood, trunks of trees, fragments of broken sluicing,--
the wash and waste of many a mile,--swept into sight a moment, and
were gone.  All of decay, wreck, and foulness gathered in the long
circuit of mining-camp and settlement, all the dregs and refuse of
a crude and wanton civilization, reappeared for an instant, and
then were hurried away in the darkness and lost.  No wonder that as
the wind ruffled the yellow waters the waves seemed to lift their
unclean hands toward the rock whereon the fallen man lay, as if
eager to snatch him from it, too, and hurry him toward the sea.

It was very still.  In the clear air a horn blown a mile away was
heard distinctly.  The jingling of a spur and a laugh on the
highway over Payne's Ridge sounded clearly across the river.  The
rattling of harness and hoofs foretold for many minutes the
approach of the Wingdam coach, that at last, with flashing lights,
passed within a few feet of the rock.  Then for an hour all again
was quiet.  Presently the moon, round and full, lifted herself
above the serried ridge and looked down upon the river.  At first
the bared peak of Deadwood Hill gleamed white and skull-like.  Then
the shadows of Payne's Ridge cast on the slope slowly sank away,
leaving the unshapely stumps, the dusty fissures, and clinging
outcrop of Deadwood Slope to stand out in black and silver.  Still
stealing softly downward, the moonlight touched the bank and the
rock, and then glittered brightly on the river.  The rock was bare
and the man was gone, but the river still hurried swiftly to the
sea.


"Is there anything for me?" asked Tommy Islington, as, a week
after, the stage drew up at the Mansion House, and Bill slowly
entered the bar-room.  Bill did not reply, but, turning to a
stranger who had entered with him, indicated with a jerk of his
finger the boy.  The stranger turned with an air half of business,
half of curiosity, and looked critically at Tommy.  "Is there
anything for me?" repeated Tommy, a little confused at the silence
and scrutiny.  Bill walked deliberately to the bar, and, placing
his back against it, faced Tommy with a look of demure enjoyment.

"Ef," he remarked slowly,--"ef a hundred thousand dollars down and
half a million in perspektive is ennything, Major, THERE IS!"


MRS. SKAGGS'S HUSBANDS.


PART II--EAST.


It was characteristic of Angel's that the disappearance of Johnson,
and the fact that he had left his entire property to Tommy, thrilled
the community but slightly in comparison with the astounding
discovery that he had anything to leave.  The finding of a cinnabar
lode at Angel's absorbed all collateral facts or subsequent details.
Prospectors from adjoining camps thronged the settlement; the
hillside for a mile on either side of Johnson's claim was staked out
and pre-empted; trade received a sudden stimulus; and, in the
excited rhetoric of the "Weekly Record," "a new era had broken upon
Angel's."  "On Thursday last," added that paper, "over five hundred
dollars was taken in over the bar of the Mansion House."

Of the fate of Johnson there was little doubt.  He had been last
seen lying on a boulder on the river-bank by outside passengers of
the Wingdam night coach, and when Finn of Robinson's Ferry admitted
to have fired three shots from a revolver at a dark object
struggling in the water near the ferry, which he "suspicioned" to be
a bear, the question seemed to be settled.  Whatever might have been
the fallibility of his judgment, of the accuracy of his aim there
could be no doubt.  The general belief that Johnson, after
possessing himself of the muleteer's pistol, could have run amuck,
gave a certain retributive justice to this story, which rendered it
acceptable to the camp.

It was also characteristic of Angel's that no feeling of envy or
opposition to the good fortune of Tommy Islington prevailed there.
That he was thoroughly cognizant, from the first, of Johnson's
discovery, that his attentions to him were interested, calculating,
and speculative was, however, the general belief of the majority,--
a belief that, singularly enough, awakened the first feelings of
genuine respect for Tommy ever shown by the camp.  "He ain't no
fool; Yuba Bill seed thet from the first," said the barkeeper.  It
was Yuba Bill who applied for the guardianship of Tommy after his
accession to Johnson's claim, and on whose bonds the richest men of
Calaveras were represented.  It was Yuba Bill, also, when Tommy was
sent East to finish his education, accompanied him to San Francisco,
and, before parting with his charge on the steamer's deck, drew him
aside, and said, "Ef at enny time you want enny money, Tommy, over
and 'bove your 'lowance, you kin write; but ef you'll take my
advice," he added, with a sudden huskiness mitigating the severity
of his voice, "you'll forget every derned ole spavined, string-halted
bummer as you ever met or knew at Angel's,--ev'ry one, Tommy,--ev'ry
one!  And so--boy--take care of yourself--and--and God bless ye, and
pertikerly d--n me for a first-class A 1 fool."  It was Yuba Bill,
also, after this speech, glared savagely around, walked down the
crowded gang-plank with a rigid and aggressive shoulder, picked a
quarrel with his cabman, and, after bundling that functionary into
his own vehicle, took the reins himself, and drove furiously to his
hotel.  "It cost me," said Bill, recounting the occurrence somewhat
later at Angel's,--"it cost me a matter o' twenty dollars afore the
jedge the next mornin'; but you kin bet high thet I taught them
'Frisco chaps suthin new about drivin'.  I didn't make it lively in
Montgomery Street for about ten minutes,--O no!"

And so by degrees the two original locaters of the great Cinnabar
lode faded from the memory of Angel's, and Calaveras knew them no
more.  In five years their very names had been forgotten; in seven
the name of the town was changed; in ten the town itself was
transported bodily to the hillside, and the chimney of the Union
Smelting Works by night flickered like a corpse-light over the site
of Johnson's cabin, and by day poisoned the pure spices of the
pines.  Even the Mansion House was dismantled, and the Wingdam
stage deserted the highway for a shorter cut by Quicksilver City.
Only the bared crest of Deadwood Hill, as of old, sharply cut the
clear blue sky, and at its base, as of old, the Stanislaus River,
unwearied and unresting, babbled, whispered, and hurried away to
the sea.


A midsummer's day was breaking lazily on the Atlantic.  There was
not wind enough to move the vapors in the foggy offing, but where
the vague distance heaved against a violet sky there were dull red
streaks that, growing brighter, presently painted out the stars.
Soon the brown rocks of Greyport appeared faintly suffused, and
then the whole ashen line of dead coast was kindled, and the
lighthouse beacons went out one by one.  And then a hundred sail,
before invisible, started out of the vapory horizon, and pressed
toward the shore.  It was morning, indeed, and some of the best
society in Greyport, having been up all night, were thinking it was
time to go to bed.

For as the sky flashed brighter it fired the clustering red roofs
of a picturesque house by the sands that had all that night, from
open lattice and illuminated balcony, given light and music to the
shore.  It glittered on the broad crystal spaces of a great
conservatory that looked upon an exquisite lawn, where all night
long the blended odors of sea and shore had swooned under the
summer moon.  But it wrought confusion among the colored lamps on
the long veranda, and startled a group of ladies and gentlemen who
had stepped from the drawing-room window to gaze upon it.  It was
so searching and sincere in its way, that, as the carriage of the
fairest Miss Gillyflower rolled away, that peerless young woman,
catching sight of her face in the oval mirror, instantly pulled
down the blinds, and, nestling the whitest shoulders in Greyport
against the crimson cushions, went to sleep.

"How haggard everybody is!  Rose, dear, you look almost
intellectual," said Blanche Masterman.

"I hope not," said Rose, simply.  "Sunrises are very trying.  Look
how that pink regularly puts out Mrs. Brown-Robinson, hair and all!"

"The angels," said the Count de Nugat, with a polite gesture toward
the sky, "must have find these celestial combinations very bad for
the toilette."

"They're safe in white,--except when they sit for their pictures in
Venice," said Blanche.  "How fresh Mr. Islington looks!  It's
really uncomplimentary to us."

"I suppose the sun recognizes in me no rival," said the young man,
demurely.  "But," he added, "I have lived much in the open air, and
require very little sleep."

"How delightful!" said Mrs. Brown-Robinson, in a low, enthusiastic
voice and a manner that held the glowing sentiment of sixteen and
the practical experiences of thirty-two in dangerous combination;--
"how perfectly delightful!  What sunrises you must have seen, and
in such wild, romantic places!  How I envy you!  My nephew was a
classmate of yours, and has often repeated to me those charming
stories you tell of your adventures.  Won't you tell some now?  Do!
How you must tire of us and this artificial life here, so
frightfully artificial, you know" (in a confidential whisper); "and
then to think of the days when you roamed the great West with the
Indians, and the bisons, and the grizzly bears!  Of course, you
have seen grizzly bears and bisons?"

"Of course he has, dear," said Blanche, a little pettishly,
throwing a cloak over her shoulders, and seizing her chaperon by
the arm; "his earliest infancy was soothed by bisons, and he
proudly points to the grizzly bear as the playmate of his youth.
Come with me, and I'll tell you all about it.  How good it is of
you," she added, sotto voce, to Islington, as he stood by the
carriage,--"how perfectly good it is of you to be like those
animals you tell us of, and not know your full power.  Think, with
your experiences and our credulity, what stories you MIGHT tell!
And you are going to walk?  Good night, then."  A slim, gloved hand
was frankly extended from the window, and the next moment the
carriage rolled away.

"Isn't Islington throwing away a chance there?" said Captain
Merwin, on the veranda.

"Perhaps he couldn't stand my lovely aunt's superadded presence.
But then, he's the guest of Blanche's father, and I dare say they
see enough of each other as it is."

"But isn't it a rather dangerous situation?"

"For him, perhaps; although he's awfully old, and very queer.  For
her, with an experience that takes in all the available men in both
hemispheres, ending with Nugat over there, I should say a man more
or less wouldn't affect her much, anyway.  Of course," he laughed,
"these are the accents of bitterness.  But that was last year."

Perhaps Islington did not overhear the speaker; perhaps, if he did,
the criticism was not new.  He turned carelessly away, and
sauntered out on the road to the sea.  Thence he strolled along the
sands toward the cliffs, where, meeting an impediment in the shape
of a garden wall, he leaped it with a certain agile, boyish ease
and experience, and struck across an open lawn toward the rocks
again.  The best society of Greyport were not early risers, and the
spectacle of a trespasser in an evening dress excited only the
criticism of grooms hanging about the stables, or cleanly housemaids
on the broad verandas that in Greyport architecture dutifully gave
upon the sea.  Only once, as he entered the boundaries of Cliffwood
Lodge, the famous seat of Renwyck Masterman, was he aware of
suspicious scrutiny; but a slouching figure that vanished quickly in
the lodge offered no opposition to his progress.  Avoiding the
pathway to the lodge, Islington kept along the rocks until, reaching
a little promontory and rustic pavilion, he sat down and gazed upon
the sea.

And presently an infinite peace stole upon him.  Except where the
waves lapped lazily the crags below, the vast expanse beyond seemed
unbroken by ripple, heaving only in broad ponderable sheets, and
rhythmically, as if still in sleep.  The air was filled with a
luminous haze that caught and held the direct sunbeams.  In the
deep calm that lay upon the sea, it seemed to Islington that all
the tenderness of culture, magic of wealth, and spell of refinement
that for years had wrought upon that favored shore had extended its
gracious influence even here.  What a pampered and caressed old
ocean it was; cajoled, flattered, and feted where it lay!  An odd
recollection of the turbid Stanislaus hurrying by the ascetic
pines, of the grim outlines of Deadwood Hill, swam before his eyes,
and made the yellow green of the velvet lawn and graceful foliage
seem almost tropical by contrast.  And, looking up, a few yards
distant he beheld a tall slip of a girl gazing upon the sea,--
Blanche Masterman.

She had plucked somewhere a large fan-shaped leaf, which she held
parasol-wise, shading the blond masses of her hair, and hiding her
gray eyes.  She had changed her festal dress, with its amplitude of
flounce and train, for a closely fitting half-antique habit whose
scant outlines would have been trying to limbs less shapely, but
which prettily accented the graceful curves and sweeping lines of
this Greyport goddess.  As Islington rose, she came toward him with
a frankly outstretched hand and unconstrained manner.  Had she
observed him first?  I don't know.

They sat down together on a rustic seat, Miss Blanche facing the
sea, and shading her eyes with the leaf.

"I don't really know how long I have been sitting here," said
Islington, "or whether I have not been actually asleep and
dreaming.  It seemed too lovely a morning to go to bed.  But you?"

From behind the leaf, it appeared that Miss Blanche, on retiring,
had been pursued by a hideous winged bug which defied the efforts
of herself and maid to dislodge.  Odin, the Spitz dog, had insisted
upon scratching at the door.  And it made her eyes red to sleep in
the morning.  And she had an early call to make.  And the sea
looked lovely.

"I'm glad to find you here, whatever be the cause," said Islington,
with his old directness.  "To-day, as you know, is my last day in
Greyport, and it is much pleasanter to say good by under this blue
sky than even beneath your father's wonderful frescos yonder.  I
want to remember you, too, as part of this pleasant prospect which
belongs to us all, rather than recall you in anybody's particular
setting."

"I know," said Blanche, with equal directness, "that houses are one
of the defects of our civilization; but I don't think I ever heard
the idea as elegantly expressed before.  Where do you go?"

"I don't know yet.  I have several plans.  I may go to South
America and become president of one of the republics,--I am not
particular which.  I am rich, but in that part of America which
lies outside of Greyport it is necessary for every man to have some
work.  My friends think I should have some great aim in life, with
a capital A.  But I was born a vagabond, and a vagabond I shall
probably die."

"I don't know anybody in South America," said Blanche, languidly.
"There were two girls here last season, but they didn't wear stays
in the house, and their white frocks never were properly done up.
If you go to South America, you must write to me."

"I will.  Can you tell me the name of this flower which I found in
your greenhouse.  It looks much like a California blossom."

"Perhaps it is.  Father bought it of a half-crazy old man who came
here one day.  Do you know him?"

Islington laughed.  "I am afraid not.  But let me present this in a
less business-like fashion."

"Thank you.  Remind me to give you one in return before you go,--or
will you choose yourself?"

They had both risen as by a common instinct.

"Good by."

The cool flower-like hand lay in his for an instant.

"Will you oblige me by putting aside that leaf a moment before I
go?"

"But my eyes are red, and I look like a perfect fright."

Yet, after a long pause, the leaf fluttered down, and a pair of
very beautiful but withal very clear and critical eyes met his.
Islington was constrained to look away.  When he turned again, she
was gone.

"Mister Hislington,--sir!"

It was Chalker, the English groom, out of breath with running.

"Seein' you alone, sir,--beg your pardon, sir,--but there's a
person--"

"A person! what the devil do you mean?  Speak English--no, damn it,
I mean don't," said Islington, snappishly.

"I sed a person, sir.  Beg pardon--no offence--but not a gent, sir.
In the lib'ry."

A little amused even through the utter dissatisfaction with himself
and vague loneliness that had suddenly come upon him, Islington, as
he walked toward the lodge, asked, "Why isn't he a gent?

"No gent--beggin' your pardin, sir--'ud guy a man in sarvis, sir.
Takes me 'ands so, sir, as I sits in the rumble at the gate, and
puts 'em downd so, sir, and sez, 'Put 'em in your pocket, young
man,--or is it a road agint you expects to see, that you 'olds hup
your 'ands, hand crosses 'em like to that,' sez he.  ''Old 'ard,'
sez he, 'on the short curves, or you'll bust your precious crust,'
sez he.  And hasks for you, sir.  This way, sir."

They entered the lodge.  Islington hurried down the long Gothic
hall, and opened the library door.

In an arm-chair, in the centre of the room, a man sat apparently
contemplating a large, stiff, yellow hat with an enormous brim,
that was placed on the floor before him.  His hands rested lightly
between his knees, but one foot was drawn up at the side of his
chair in a peculiar manner.  In the first glance that Islington
gave, the attitude in some odd, irreconcilable way suggested a
brake.  In another moment he dashed across the room, and, holding
out both hands, cried, "Yuba Bill!"

The man rose, caught Islington by the shoulders, wheeled him round,
hugged him, felt of his ribs like a good-natured ogre, shook his
hands violently, laughed, and then said, somewhat ruefully, "And
how ever did you know me?"

Seeing that Yuba Bill evidently regarded himself as in some
elaborate disguise, Islington laughed, and suggested that it must
have been instinct.

"And you?" said Bill, holding him at arm's length, and surveying
him critically,--"you!--toe think--toe think--a little cuss no
higher nor a trace, a boy as I've flicked outer the road with a
whip time in agin, a boy ez never hed much clothes to speak of,
turned into a sport!"

Islington remembered, with a thrill of ludicrous terror, that he
still wore his evening dress.

"Turned," continued Yuba Bill, severely,--"turned into a restyourant
waiter,--a garsong!  Eh, Alfonse, bring me a patty de foy grass
and an omelette, demme!"

"Dear old chap!" said Islington, laughing, and trying to put his
hand over Bill's bearded mouth, "but you--YOU don't look exactly
like yourself!  You're not well, Bill."  And indeed, as he turned
toward the light, Bill's eyes appeared cavernous, and his hair and
beard thickly streaked with gray.

"Maybe it's this yer harness," said Bill, a little anxiously.
"When I hitches on this yer curb" (he indicated a massive gold
watch-chain with enormous links), "and mounts this 'morning star,'"
(he pointed to a very large solitaire pin which had the appearance
of blistering his whole shirt-front), "it kinder weighs heavy on
me, Tommy.  Otherwise I'm all right, my boy,--all right."  But he
evaded Islington's keen eye, and turned from the light.

"You have something to tell me, Bill," said Islington, suddenly,
and with almost brusque directness; "out with it."

Bill did not speak, but moved uneasily toward his hat,

"You didn't come three thousand miles, without a word of warning,
to talk to me of old times," said Islington, more kindly, "glad as
I would have been to see you.  It isn't your way, Bill, and you
know it.  We shall not be disturbed here," he added, in reply to an
inquiring glance that Bill directed to the door, "and I am ready to
hear you."

"Firstly, then," said Bill, drawing his chair nearer Islington,
"answer me one question, Tommy, fair and square, and up and down."

"Go on," said Islington, with a slight smile.

"Ef I should say to you, Tommy,--say to you to-day, right here, you
must come with me,--you must leave this place for a month, a year,
two years maybe, perhaps forever,--is there anything that 'ud keep
you,--anything, my boy, ez you couldn't leave?"

"No," said Tommy, quietly; "I am only visiting here.  I thought of
leaving Greyport to-day."

"But if I should say to you, Tommy, come with me on a pasear to
Chiny, to Japan, to South Ameriky, p'r'aps, could you go?"

"Yes," said Islington, after a slight pause.

"Thar isn't ennything," said Bill, drawing a little closer, and
lowering his voice confidentially,--"ennything in the way of a
young woman--you understand, Tommy--ez would keep you?  They're
mighty sweet about here; and whether a man is young or old, Tommy,
there's always some woman as is brake or whip to him!"

In a certain excited bitterness that characterized the delivery of
this abstract truth, Bill did not see that the young man's face
flushed slightly as he answered "No."

"Then listen.  It's seven years ago, Tommy, thet I was working one
o' the Pioneer coaches over from Gold Hill.  Ez I stood in front o'
the stage-office, the sheriff o' the county comes to me, and he
sez, 'Bill,' sez he, 'I've got a looney chap, as I'm in charge of,
taking 'im down to the 'sylum in Stockton.  He'z quiet and
peaceable, but the insides don't like to ride with him.  Hev you
enny objection to give him a lift on the box beside you?'  I sez,
'No; put him up.'  When I came to go and get up on that box beside
him, that man, Tommy,--that man sittin' there, quiet and peaceable,
was--Johnson!

"He didn't know me, my boy," Yuba Bill continued, rising and
putting his hands on Tommy's shoulders,--"he didn't know me.  He
didn't know nothing about you, nor Angel's, nor the quicksilver
lode, nor even his own name.  He said his name was Skaggs, but I
knowd it was Johnson.  Thar was times, Tommy, you might have
knocked me off that box with a feather; thar was times when if the
twenty-seven passengers o' that stage hed found theirselves
swimming in the American River five hundred feet below the road, I
never could have explained it satisfactorily to the company,--
never.

"The sheriff said," Bill continued hastily, as if to preclude any
interruption from the young man,--"the sheriff said he had been
brought into Murphy's Camp three years before, dripping with water,
and sufferin' from perkussion of the brain, and had been cared for
generally by the boys 'round.  When I told the sheriff I knowed
'im, I got him to leave him in my care; and I took him to 'Frisco,
Tommy, to 'Frisco, and I put him in charge o' the best doctors
there, and paid his board myself.  There was nothin' he didn't have
ez he wanted.  Don't look that way, my dear boy, for God's sake,
don't!"

"O Bill," said Islington, rising and staggering to the window, "why
did you keep this from me?"

"Why?" said Bill, turning on him savagely,--"why? because I warn't
a fool.  Thar was you, winnin' your way in college; thar was YOU,
risin' in the world, and of some account to it; yer was an old
bummer, ez good ez dead to it,--a man ez oughter been dead afore! a
man ez never denied it!  But you allus liked him better nor me,"
said Bill, bitterly.

"Forgive me, Bill," said the young man, seizing both his hands.  "I
know you did it for the best; but go on."

"Thar ain't much more to tell, nor much use to tell it, as I can
see," said Bill, moodily.  "He never could be cured, the doctors
said, for he had what they called monomania,--was always talking
about his wife and darter that somebody had stole away years ago,
and plannin' revenge on that somebody.  And six months ago he was
missed.  I tracked him to Carson, to Salt Lake City, to Omaha, to
Chicago, to New York,--and here!"

"Here!" echoed Islington.

"Here!  And that's what brings me here to-day.  Whethers he's crazy
or well, whethers he's huntin' you or lookin' up that other man,
you must get away from here.  You mustn't see him.  You and me,
Tommy, will go away on a cruise.  In three or four years he'll be
dead or missing, and then we'll come back.  Come."  And he rose to
his feet.

"Bill," said Islington, rising also, and taking the hand of his
friend, with the same quiet obstinacy that in the old days had
endeared him to Bill, "wherever he is, here or elsewhere, sane or
crazy, I shall seek and find him.  Every dollar that I have shall
be his, every dollar that I have spent shall be returned to him.  I
am young yet, thank God, and can work; and if there is a way out of
this miserable business, I shall find it."

"I knew," said Bill, with a surliness that ill concealed his
evident admiration of the calm figure before him--"I knew the
partikler style of d--n fool that you was, and expected no better.
Good by, then--  God Almighty! who's that?"

He was on his way to the open French window, but had started back,
his face quite white and bloodless, and his eyes staring.
Islington ran to the window, and looked out.  A white skirt
vanished around the corner of the veranda.  When he returned, Bill
had dropped into a chair.

"It must have been Miss Masterman, I think; but what's the matter?"

"Nothing," said Bill, faintly; "have you got any whiskey handy?"

Islington brought a decanter, and, pouring out some spirits, handed
the glass to Bill.  Bill drained it, and then said, "Who is Miss
Masterman?"

"Mr. Masterman's daughter; that is, an adopted daughter, I believe."

"Wot name?"

"I really don't know," said Islington, pettishly, more vexed than
he cared to own at this questioning.

Yuba Bill rose and walked to the window, closed it, walked back
again to the door, glanced at Islington, hesitated, and then
returned to his chair.

"I didn't tell you I was married.,--did I?" he said suddenly,
looking up in Islington's face with an unsuccessful attempt at a
reckless laugh.

"No," said Islington, more pained at the manner than the words.

"Fact," said Yuba Bill.  "Three years ago it was, Tommy,--three
years ago!"

He looked so hard at Islington, that, feeling he was expected to
say something, he asked vaguely, "Who did you marry?"

"Thet's it!" said Yuba Bill; "I can't ezactly say; partikly,
though, a she devil! generally, the wife of half a dozen other
men."

Accustomed, apparently, to have his conjugal infelicities a theme
of mirth among men, and seeing no trace of amusement on Islington's
grave face, his dogged, reckless manner softened, and, drawing his
chair closer to Islington, he went on: "It all began outer this: we
was coming down Watson's grade one night pretty free, when the
expressman turns to me and sez, 'There's a row inside, and you'd
better pull up!'  I pulls up, and out hops, first a woman, and then
two or three chaps swearing and cursin', and tryin' to drag some
one arter them.  Then it 'pear'd, Tommy, thet it was this woman's
drunken husband they was going to put out for abusin' her, and
strikin' her in the coach; and if it hadn't been for me, my boy,
they'd hev left that chap thar in the road.  But I fixes matters up
by putting her alongside o' me on the box, and we drove on.  She
was very white, Tommy,--for the matter o' that, she was always one
o' these very white women, that never got red in the face,--but she
never cried a whimper.  Most wimin would have cried.  It was queer,
but she never cried.  I thought so at the time.

"She was very tall, with a lot o' light hair meandering down the
back of her head, as long as a deer-skin whip-lash, and about the
color.  She hed eyes thet'd bore you through at fifty yards, and
pooty hands and feet.  And when she kinder got out o' that stiff,
narvous state she was in, and warmed up a little, and got chipper,
by G-d, sir, she was handsome,--she was that!"

A little flushed and embarrassed at his own enthusiasm, he stopped,
and then said, carelessly, "They got off at Murphy's."

"Well," said Islington.

"Well, I used to see her often arter thet, and when she was alone
she allus took the box-seat.  She kinder confided her troubles to
me, how her husband got drunk and abused her; and I didn't see much
o' him, for he was away in 'Frisco arter thet.  But it was all
square, Tommy,--all square 'twixt me and her.

"I got a going there a good deal, and then one day I sez to myself,
'Bill, this won't do,' and I got changed to another route.  Did you
ever know Jackson Filltree, Tommy?" said Bill, breaking off
suddenly.

"No."

"Might have heerd of him, p'r'aps?"

"No," said Islington, impatiently.

"Jackson Filltree ran the express from White's out to Summit,
'cross the North Fork of the Yuba.  One day he sez to me, 'Bill,
that's a mighty bad ford at the North Fork.'  I sez, 'I believe
you, Jackson.'  'It'll git me some day, Bill, sure,' sez he.  I
sez, 'Why don't you take the lower ford?'  'I don't know,' sez he,
'but I can't.'  So ever after, when I met him, he sez, 'That North
Fork ain't got me yet.'  One day I was in Sacramento, and up comes
Filltree.  He sez, 'I've sold out the express business on account
of the North Fork, but it's bound to get me yet, Bill, sure'; and
he laughs.  Two weeks after they finds his body below the ford,
whar he tried to cross, comin' down from the Summit way.  Folks
said it was foolishness: Tommy, I sez it was Fate!  The second day
arter I was changed to the Placerville route, thet woman comes
outer the hotel above the stage-office.  Her husband, she said, was
lying sick in Placerville; that's what she said; but it was Fate,
Tommy, Fate.  Three months afterward, her husband takes an overdose
of morphine for delirium tremems, and dies.  There's folks ez sez
she gave it to him, but it's Fate.  A year after that I married
her,--Fate, Tommy, Fate!

"I lived with her jest three months," he went on, after a long
breath,--"three months!  It ain't much time for a happy man.  I've
seen a good deal o' hard life in my day, but there was days in that
three months longer than any day in my life,--days, Tommy, when it
was a toss-up whether I should kill her or she me.  But thar, I'm
done.  You are a young man, Tommy, and I ain't goin' to tell things
thet, old as I am, three years ago I couldn't have believed."

When at last, with his grim face turned toward the window, he sat
silently with his clinched hands on his knees before him, Islington
asked where his wife was now.

"Ask me no more, my boy,--no more.  I've said my say."  With a
gesture as of throwing down a pair of reins before him, he rose,
and walked to the window.

"You kin understand, Tommy, why a little trip around the world 'ud
do me good.  Ef you can't go with me, well and good.  But go I
must."

"Not before luncheon, I hope," said a very sweet voice, as Blanche
Masterman suddenly stood before them.  "Father would never forgive
me if in his absence I permitted one of Mr. Islington's friends to
go in this way.  You will stay, won't you?  Do!  And you will give
me your arm now; and when Mr. Islington has done staring, he will
follow us into the dining-room and introduce you."


"I have quite fallen in love with your friend," said Miss Blanche,
as they stood in the drawing-room looking at the figure of Bill,
strolling, with his short pipe in his mouth, through the distant
shrubbery.  "He asks very queer questions, though.  He wanted to
know my mother's maiden name."

"He is an honest fellow," said Islington, gravely.

"You are very much subdued.  You don't thank me, I dare say, for
keeping you and your friend here; but you couldn't go, you know,
until father returned."

Islington smiled, but not very gayly.

"And then I think it much better for us to part here under these
frescos, don't you?  Good by."

She extended her long, slim hand.

"Out in the sunlight there, when my eyes were red, you were very
anxious to look at me," she added, in a dangerous voice.

Islington raised his sad eyes to hers.  Something glittering upon
her own sweet lashes trembled and fell.

"Blanche!"

She was rosy enough now, and would have withdrawn her hand, but
Islington detained it.  She was not quite certain but that her
waist was also in jeopardy.  Yet she could not help saying, "Are
you sure that there isn't anything in the way of a young woman that
would keep you?"

"Blanche!" said Islington in reproachful horror.

"If gentlemen will roar out their secrets before an open window,
with a young woman lying on a sofa on the veranda, reading a stupid
French novel, they must not be surprised if she gives more
attention to them than her book."

"Then you know all, Blanche?"

"I know," said Blanche, "let's see--I know the partiklar style of--
ahem!--fool you was, and expected no better.  Good by."  And,
gliding like a lovely and innocent milk snake out of his grasp, she
slipped away.


To the pleasant ripple of waves, the sound of music and light
voices, the yellow midsummer moon again rose over Greyport.  It
looked upon formless masses of rock and shrubbery, wide spaces of
lawn and beach, and a shimmering expanse of water.  It singled out
particular objects,--a white sail in shore, a crystal globe upon
the lawn, and flashed upon something held between the teeth of a
crouching figure scaling the low wall of Cliffwood Lodge.  Then, as
a man and woman passed out from under the shadows of the foliage
into the open moonlight of the garden path, the figure leaped from
the wall, and stood erect and waiting in the shadow.

It was the figure of an old man, with rolling eyes, his trembling
hand grasping a long, keen knife,--a figure more pitiable than
pitiless, more pathetic than terrible.  But the next moment the
knife was stricken from his hand, and he struggled in the firm
grasp of another figure that apparently sprang from the wall beside
him.

"D--n you, Masterman!" cried the old man, hoarsely; "give me fair
play, and I'll kill you yet!"

"Which my name is Yuba Bill," said Bill, quietly, "and it's time
this d--n fooling was stopped."

The old man glared in Bill's face savagely.  "I know you.  You're
one of Masterman's friends,--d--n you,--let me go till I cut his
heart out,--let me go!  Where is my Mary?--where is my wife?--there
she is! there!--there!--there!  Mary!"  He would have screamed, but
Bill placed his powerful hand upon his mouth, as he turned in the
direction of the old man's glance.  Distinct in the moonlight the
figures of Islington and Blanche, arm in arm, stood out upon the
garden path.

"Give me my wife!" muttered the old man hoarsely, between Bill's
fingers.  "Where is she?"

A sudden fury passed over Yuba Bill's face.  "Where is your wife?"
he echoed, pressing the old man back against the garden wall, and
holding him there as in a vice.  "Where is your wife?" he repeated,
thrusting his grim sardonic jaw and savage eyes into the old man's
frightened face.  "Where is Jack Adam's wife?  Where is MY wife?
Where is the she-devil that drove one man mad, that sent another to
hell by his own hand, that eternally broke and ruined me?  Where!
Where!  Do you ask where?  In jail in Sacramento,--in jail, do you
hear?--in jail for murder, Johnson,--murder!"

The old man gasped, stiffened, and then, relaxing, suddenly
slipped, a mere inanimate mass, at Yuba Bill's feet.  With a sudden
revulsion of feeling, Yuba Bill dropped at his side, and, lifting
him tenderly in his arms, whispered, "Look up, old man, Johnson!
look up, for God's sake!--it's me,--Yuba Bill! and yonder is your
daughter, and--Tommy!--don't you know--Tommy, little Tommy
Islington?"

Johnson's eyes slowly opened.  He whispered, "Tommy! yes, Tommy!
Sit by me, Tommy.  But don't sit so near the bank.  Don't you see
how the river is rising and beckoning to me,--hissing, and boilin'
over the rocks?  It's gittin higher!--hold me, Tommy,--hold me, and
don't let me go yet.  We'll live to cut his heart out, Tommy,--
we'll live--we'll--"  His head sank, and the rushing river,
invisible to all eyes save his, leaped toward him out of the
darkness, and bore him away, no longer to the darkness, but through
it to the distant, peaceful shining sea.



HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON'S BAR.


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

Nor was the weather any better in the foothills.  The mud lay deep
on the mountain road; wagons that neither physical force nor moral
objurgation could move from the evil ways into which they had
fallen, encumbered the track, and the way to Simpson's Bar was
indicated by broken-down teams and hard swearing.  And farther on,
cut off and inaccessible, rained upon and bedraggled, smitten by
high winds and threatened by high water, Simpson's Bar, on the eve
of Christmas day, 1862, clung like a swallow's nest to the rocky
entablature and splintered capitals of Table Mountain, and shook in
the blast.

As night shut down on the settlement, a few lights gleamed through
the mist from the windows of cabins on either side of the highway
now crossed and gullied by lawless streams and swept by marauding
winds.  Happily most of the population were gathered at Thompson's
store, clustered around a red-hot stove, at which they silently
spat in some accepted sense of social communion that perhaps
rendered conversation unnecessary.  Indeed, most methods of
diversion had long since been exhausted on Simpson's Bar; high
water had suspended the regular occupations on gulch and on river,
and a consequent lack of money and whiskey had taken the zest from
most illegitimate recreation.  Even Mr. Hamlin was fain to leave
the Bar with fifty dollars in his pocket,--the only amount actually
realized of the large sums won by him in the successful exercise of
his arduous profession.  "Ef I was asked," he remarked somewhat
later,--"ef I was asked to pint out a purty little village where a
retired sport as didn't care for money could exercise hisself,
frequent and lively, I'd say Simpson's Bar; but for a young man
with a large family depending on his exertions, it don't pay."  As
Mr. Hamlin's family consisted mainly of female adults, this remark
is quoted rather to show the breadth of his humor than the exact
extent of his responsibilities.

Howbeit, the unconscious objects of this satire sat that evening in
the listless apathy begotten of idleness and lack of excitement.
Even the sudden splashing of hoofs before the door did not arouse
them.  Dick Bullen alone paused in the act of scraping out his
pipe, and lifted his head, but no other one of the group indicated
any interest in, or recognition of, the man who entered.

It was a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in
Simpson's Bar as "The Old Man."  A man of perhaps fifty years;
grizzled and scant of hair, but still fresh and youthful of
complexion.  A face full of ready, but not very powerful sympathy,
with a chameleon-like aptitude for taking on the shade and color of
contiguous moods and feelings.  He had evidently just left some
hilarious companions, and did not at first notice the gravity of
the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest man jocularly,
and threw himself into a vacant chair.

"Jest heard the best thing out, boys!  Ye know Smiley, over yar,--
Jim Smiley,--funniest man in the Bar?  Well, Jim was jest telling
the richest yarn about--"

"Smiley's a ---- fool," interrupted a gloomy voice.

"A particular ---- skunk," added another in sepulchral accents.

A silence followed these positive statements.  The Old Man glanced
quickly around the group.  Then his face slowly changed.  "That's
so," he said reflectively, after a pause, "certingly a sort of a
skunk and suthin of a fool.  In course."  He was silent for a
moment as in painful contemplation of the unsavoriness and folly of
the unpopular Smiley.  "Dismal weather, ain't it?" he added, now
fully embarked on the current of prevailing sentiment.  "Mighty
rough papers on the boys, and no show for money this season.  And
tomorrow's Christmas."

There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but
whether of satisfaction or disgust was not plain.  "Yes," continued
the Old Man in the lugubrious tone he had, within the last few
moments, unconsciously adopted,--"yes, Christmas, and to-night's
Christmas eve.  Ye see, boys, I kinder thought--that is, I sorter
had an idee, jest passin' like, you know--that may be ye'd all like
to come over to my house to-night and have a sort of tear round.
But I suppose, now, you wouldn't?  Don't feel like it, may be?" he
added with anxious sympathy, peering into the faces of his
companions.

"Well, I don't know," responded Tom Flynn with some cheerfulness.
"P'r'aps we may.  But how about your wife, Old Man?  What does SHE
say to it?"

The Old Man hesitated.  His conjugal experience had not been a
happy one, and the fact was known to Simpson's Bar.  His first
wife, a delicate, pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and
secretly from the jealous suspicions of her husband, until one day
he invited the whole Bar to his house to expose her infidelity.  On
arriving, the party found the shy, petite creature quietly engaged
in her household duties, and retired abashed and discomfited.  But
the sensitive woman did not easily recover from the shock of this
extraordinary outrage.  It was with difficulty she regained her
equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the closet in
which he was concealed and escape with him.  She left a boy of
three years to comfort her bereaved husband.  The Old Man's present
wife had been his cook.  She was large, loyal, and aggressive.

Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick suggested with great directness
that it was the "Old Man's house," and that, invoking the Divine
Power, if the case were his own, he would invite whom he pleased,
even if in so doing he imperilled his salvation.  The Powers of
Evil, he further remarked, should contend against him vainly.  All
this delivered with a terseness and vigor lost in this necessary
translation.

"In course.  Certainly.  Thet's it," said the Old Man with a
sympathetic frown.  "Thar's no trouble about THET.  It's my own
house, built every stick on it myself.  Don't you be afeard o' her,
boys.  She MAY cut up a trifle rough,--ez wimmin do,--but she'll
come round."  Secretly the Old Man trusted to the exaltation of
liquor and the power of courageous example to sustain him in such
an emergency.

As yet, Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader of Simpson's Bar, had
not spoken.  He now took his pipe from his lips.  "Old Man, how's
that yer Johnny gettin' on?  Seems to me he didn't look so peart
last time I seed him on the bluff heavin' rocks at Chinamen.
Didn't seem to take much interest in it.  Thar was a gang of 'em by
yar yesterday,--drownded out up the river,--and I kinder thought o'
Johnny, and how he'd miss 'em!  May be now, we'd be in the way ef
he wus sick?"

The father, evidently touched not only by this pathetic picture of
Johnny's deprivation, but by the considerate delicacy of the
speaker, hastened to assure him that Johnny was better and that a
"little fun might 'liven him up."  Whereupon Dick arose, shook
himself, and saying, "I'm ready.  Lead the way, Old Man: here
goes," himself led the way with a leap, a characteristic howl, and
darted out into the night.  As he passed through the outer room he
caught up a blazing brand from the hearth.  The action was repeated
by the rest of the party, closely following and elbowing each
other, and before the astonished proprietor of Thompson's grocery
was aware of the intention of his guests, the room was deserted.

The night was pitchy dark.  In the first gust of wind their
temporary torches were extinguished, and only the red brands
dancing and flitting in the gloom like drunken will-o'-the-wisps
indicated their whereabouts.  Their way led up Pine-Tree Canyon, at
the head of which a broad, low, bark-thatched cabin burrowed in the
mountain-side.  It was the home of the Old Man, and the entrance to
the tunnel in which he worked when he worked at all.  Here the
crowd paused for a moment, out of delicate deference to their host,
who came up panting in the rear.

"P'r'aps ye'd better hold on a second out yer, whilst I go in and
see thet things is all right," said the Old Man, with an
indifference he was far from feeling.  The suggestion was
graciously accepted, the door opened and closed on the host, and
the crowd, leaning their backs against the wall and cowering under
the eaves, waited and listened.

For a few moments there was no sound but the dripping of water from
the eaves, and the stir and rustle of wrestling boughs above them.
Then the men became uneasy, and whispered suggestion and suspicion
passed from the one to the other.  "Reckon she's caved in his head
the first lick!"  "Decoyed him inter the tunnel and barred him up,
likely."  "Got him down and sittin' on him."  "Prob'ly bilin suthin
to heave on us: stand clear the door, boys!"  For just then the
latch clicked, the door slowly opened, and a voice said, "Come in
out o' the wet."

The voice was neither that of the Old Man nor of his wife.  It was
the voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that
preternatural hoarseness which only vagabondage and the habit of
premature self-assertion can give.  It was the face of a small boy
that looked up at theirs,--a face that might have been pretty and
even refined but that it was darkened by evil knowledge from
within, and dirt and hard experience from without.  He had a
blanket around his shoulders and had evidently just risen from his
bed.  "Come in," he repeated," and don't make no noise.  The Old
Man's in there talking to mar," he continued, pointing to an
adjacent room which seemed to be a kitchen, from which the Old
Man's voice came in deprecating accents.  "Let me be," he added,
querulously, to Dick Bullen, who had caught him up, blanket and
all, and was affecting to toss him into the fire, "let go o' me,
you d----d old fool, d'ye hear?"

Thus adjured, Dick Bullen lowered Johnny to the ground with a
smothered laugh, while the men, entering quietly, ranged themselves
around a long table of rough boards which occupied the centre of
the room.  Johnny then gravely proceeded to a cupboard and brought
out several articles which he deposited on the table.  "Thar's
whiskey.  And crackers.  And red herons.  And cheese."  He took a
bite of the latter on his way to the table.  "And sugar."  He
scooped up a mouthful en route with a small and very dirty hand.
"And terbacker.  Thar's dried appils too on the shelf, but I don't
admire 'em.  Appils is swellin'.  Thar," he concluded, "now wade
in, and don't be afeard.  I don't mind the old woman.  She don't
b'long to ME.  S'long."

He had stepped to the threshold of a small room, scarcely larger
than a closet, partitioned off from the main apartment, and holding
in its dim recess a small bed.  He stood there a moment looking at
the company, his bare feet peeping from the blanket, and nodded.

"Hello, Johnny!  You ain't goin' to turn in agin, are ye?" said
Dick.

"Yes, I are," responded Johnny, decidedly.

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

"I'm sick."

"How sick!"

"I've got a fevier.  And childblains.  And roomatiz," returned
Johnny, and vanished within.  After a moment's pause, he added in
the dark, apparently from under the bedclothes,--"And biles!"

There was an embarrassing silence.  The men looked at each other,
and at the fire.  Even with the appetizing banquet before them, it
seemed as if they might again fall into the despondency of
Thompson's grocery, when the voice of the Old Man, incautiously
lifted, came deprecatingly from the kitchen.

"Certainly!  Thet's so.  In course they is.  A gang o' lazy drunken
loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen's the ornariest of all.  Didn't
hev no more sabe than to come round yar with sickness in the house
and no provision.  Thet's what I said: 'Bullen,' sez I, 'it's crazy
drunk you are, or a fool,' sez I, 'to think o' such a thing.'
'Staples,' I sez, 'be you a man, Staples, and 'spect to raise h-ll
under my roof and invalids lyin' round?'  But they would come,--
they would.  Thet's wot you must 'spect o' such trash as lays round
the Bar."

A burst of laughter from the men followed this unfortunate
exposure.  Whether it was overheard in the kitchen, or whether the
Old Man's irate companion had just then exhausted all other modes
of expressing her contemptuous indignation, I cannot say, but a
back door was suddenly slammed with great violence.  A moment later
and the Old Man reappeared, haply unconscious of the cause of the
late hilarious outburst, and smiled blandly.

"The old woman thought she'd jest run over to Mrs. McFadden's for a
sociable call," he explained, with jaunty indifference, as he took
a seat at the board.

Oddly enough it needed this untoward incident to relieve the
embarrassment that was beginning to be felt by the party, and their
natural audacity returned with their host.  I do not propose to
record the convivialities of that evening.  The inquisitive reader
will accept the statement that the conversation was characterized
by the same intellectual exaltation, the same cautious reverence,
the same fastidious delicacy, the same rhetorical precision, and
the same logical and coherent discourse somewhat later in the
evening, which distinguish similar gatherings of the masculine sex
in more civilized localities and under more favorable auspices.  No
glasses were broken in the absence of any; no liquor was uselessly
spilt on floor or table in the scarcity of that article.

It was nearly midnight when the festivities were interrupted.
"Hush," said Dick Bullen, holding up his hand.  It was the
querulous voice of Johnny from his adjacent closet: "O dad!"

The Old Man arose hurriedly and disappeared in the closet.
Presently he reappeared.  "His rheumatiz is coming on agin bad," he
explained, "and he wants rubbin'."  He lifted the demijohn of
whiskey from the table and shook it.  It was empty.  Dick Bullen
put down his tin cup with an embarrassed laugh.  So did the others.
The Old Man examined their contents and said hopefully, "I reckon
that's enough; he don't need much.  You hold on all o' you for a
spell, and I'll be back"; and vanished in the closet with an old
flannel shirt and the whiskey.  The door closed but imperfectly,
and the following dialogue was distinctly audible:--

"Now, Sonny, whar does she ache worst?"

"Sometimes over yar and sometimes under yer; but it's most powerful
from yer to yer.  Rub yer, dad."

A silence seemed to indicate a brisk rubbing.  Then Johnny:

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

"Yes, sonny."

"To-morrer's Chrismiss, ain't it?"

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

"Better rub a little furder down.  Wot's Chrismiss, anyway?  Wot's
it all about?"

"O, it's a day."

This exhaustive definition was apparently satisfactory, for there
was a silent interval of rubbing.  Presently Johnny again:

"Mar sez that everywhere else but yer everybody gives things to
everybody Chrismiss, and then she jist waded inter you.  She sez
thar's a man they call Sandy Claws, not a white man, you know, but a
kind o' Chinemin, comes down the chimbley night afore Chrismiss and
gives things to chillern,--boys like me.  Puts 'em in their butes!
Thet's what she tried to play upon me.  Easy now, pop, whar are you
rubbin' to,--thet's a mile from the place.  She jest made that up,
didn't she, jest to aggrewate me and you?  Don't rub thar. . . .
Why, dad!"

In the great quiet that seemed to have fallen upon the house the
sigh of the near pines and the drip of leaves without was very
distinct.  Johnny's voice, too, was lowered as he went on, "Don't
you take on now, fur I'm gettin' all right fast.  Wot's the boys
doin' out thar?"

The Old Man partly opened the door and peered through.  His guests
were sitting there sociably enough, and there were a few silver
coins and a lean buckskin purse on the table.  "Bettin' on suthin,--
some little game or 'nother.  They're all right," he replied to
Johnny, and recommenced his rubbing.

"I'd like to take a hand and win some money," said Johnny,
reflectively, after a pause.

The Old Man glibly repeated what was evidently a familiar formula,
that if Johnny would wait until he struck it rich in the tunnel
he'd have lots of money, etc., etc.

"Yes," said Johnny, "but you don't.  And whether you strike it or I
win it, it's about the same.  It's all luck.  But it's mighty
cur'o's about Chrismiss,--ain't it?  Why do they call it
Chrismiss?"

Perhaps from some instinctive deference to the overhearing of his
guests, or from some vague sense of incongruity, the Old Man's
reply was so low as to be inaudible beyond the room.

"Yes," said Johnny, with some slight abatement of interest, "I've
heerd o' HIM before.  Thar, that'll do, dad.  I don't ache near so
bad as I did.  Now wrap me tight in this yer blanket.  So.  Now,"
he added in a muffled whisper, "sit down yer by me till I go
asleep."  To assure himself of obedience, he disengaged one hand
from the blanket and, grasping his father's sleeve, again composed
himself to rest.

For some moments the Old Man waited patiently.  Then the unwonted
stillness of the house excited his curiosity, and without moving
from the bed, he cautiously opened the door with his disengaged
hand, and looked into the main room.  To his infinite surprise it
was dark and deserted.  But even then a smouldering log on the
hearth broke, and by the upspringing blaze he saw the figure of
Dick Bullen sitting by the dying embers.

"Hello!"

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

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

"Gone up the canyon on a little pasear.  They're coming back for me
in a minit.  I'm waitin' round for 'em.  What are you starin' at,
Old Man?" he added with a forced laugh; "do you think I'm drunk?"

The Old Man might have been pardoned the supposition, for Dick's
eyes were humid and his face flushed.  He loitered and lounged back
to the chimney, yawned, shook himself, buttoned up his coat and
laughed.  "Liquor ain't so plenty as that, Old Man.  Now don't you
git up," he continued, as the Old Man made a movement to release
his sleeve from Johnny's hand.  "Don't you mind manners.  Sit jest
whar you be; I'm goin' in a jiffy.  Thar, that's them now."

There was a low tap at the door.  Dick Bullen opened it quickly,
nodded "Good night" to his host, and disappeared.  The Old Man
would have followed him but for the hand that still unconsciously
grasped his sleeve.  He could have easily disengaged it: it was
small, weak, and emaciated.  But perhaps because it WAS small,
weak, and emaciated, he changed his mind, and, drawing his chair
closer to the bed, rested his head upon it.  In this defenceless
attitude the potency of his earlier potations surprised him.  The
room flickered and faded before his eyes, reappeared, faded again,
went out, and left him--asleep.

Meantime Dick Bullen, closing the door, confronted his companions.
"Are you ready?" said Staples.  "Ready," said Dick; "what's the
time?"  "Past twelve," was the reply; "can you make it?--it's nigh
on fifty miles, the round trip hither and yon."  "I reckon,"
returned Dick, shortly.  "Whar's the mare?"  "Bill and Jack's
holdin' her at the crossin'."  "Let 'em hold on a minit longer,"
said Dick.

He turned and re-entered the house softly.  By the light of the
guttering candle and dying fire he saw that the door of the little
room was open.  He stepped toward it on tiptoe and looked in.  The
Old Man had fallen back in his chair, snoring, his helpless feet
thrust out in a line with his collapsed shoulders, and his hat
pulled over his eyes.  Beside him, on a narrow wooden bedstead, lay
Johnny, muffled tightly in a blanket that hid all save a strip of
forehead and a few curls damp with perspiration.  Dick Bullen made
a step forward, hesitated, and glanced over his shoulder into the
deserted room.  Everything was quiet.  With a sudden resolution he
parted his huge mustaches with both hands and stooped over the
sleeping boy.  But even as he did so a mischievous blast, lying in
wait, swooped down the chimney, rekindled the hearth, and lit up
the room with a shameless glow from which Dick fled in bashful
terror.

His companions were already waiting for him at the crossing.  Two
of them were struggling in the darkness with some strange misshapen
bulk, which as Dick came nearer took the semblance of a great
yellow horse.

It was the mare.  She was not a pretty picture.  From her Roman
nose to her rising haunches, from her arched spine hidden by the
stiff machillas of a Mexican saddle, to her thick, straight, bony
legs, there was not a line of equine grace.  In her half-blind but
wholly vicious white eyes, in her protruding under lip, in her
monstrous color, there was nothing but ugliness and vice.

"Now then," said Staples, "stand cl'ar of her heels, boys, and up
with you.  Don't miss your first holt of her mane, and mind ye get
your off stirrup QUICK.  Ready!"

There was a leap, a scrambling struggle, a bound, a wild retreat of
the crowd, a circle of flying hoofs, two springless leaps that
jarred the earth, a rapid play and jingle of spurs, a plunge, and
then the voice of Dick somewhere in the darkness, "All right!"

"Don't take the lower road back onless you're hard pushed for time!
Don't hold her in down hill!  We'll be at the ford at five.
G'lang!  Hoopa!  Mula!  GO!"

A splash, a spark struck from the ledge in the road, a clatter in
the rocky cut beyond, and Dick was gone.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

Sing, O Muse, the ride of Richard Bullen!  Sing, O Muse of
chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of
low churls, the fearsome ride and grewsome perils of the Flower of
Simpson's Bar!  Alack! she is dainty, this Muse!  She will have
none of this bucking brute and swaggering, ragged rider, and I must
fain follow him in prose, afoot!

It was one o'clock, and yet he had only gained Rattlesnake Hill.
For in that time Jovita had rehearsed to him all her imperfections
and practised all her vices.  Thrice had she stumbled.  Twice had
she thrown up her Roman nose in a straight line with the reins,
and, resisting bit and spur, struck out madly across country.
Twice had she reared, and, rearing, fallen backward; and twice had
the agile Dick, unharmed, regained his seat before she found her
vicious legs again.  And a mile beyond them, at the foot of a long
hill, was Rattlesnake Creek.  Dick knew that here was the crucial
test of his ability to perform his enterprise, set his teeth
grimly, put his knees well into her flanks, and changed his
defensive tactics to brisk aggression.  Bullied and maddened,
Jovita began the descent of the hill.  Here the artful Richard
pretended to hold her in with ostentatious objurgation and well-
feigned cries of alarm.  It is unnecessary to add that Jovita
instantly ran away.  Nor need I state the time made in the descent;
it is written in the chronicles of Simpson's Bar.  Enough that in
another moment, as it seemed to Dick, she was splashing on the
overflowed banks of Rattlesnake Creek.  As Dick expected, the
momentum she had acquired carried her beyond the point of balking,
and, holding her well together for a mighty leap, they dashed into
the middle of the swiftly flowing current.  A few moments of
kicking, wading, and swimming, and Dick drew a long breath on the
opposite bank.

The road from Rattlesnake Creek to Red Mountain was tolerably
level.  Either the plunge in Rattlesnake Creek had dampened her
baleful fire, or the art which led to it had shown her the superior
wickedness of her rider, for Jovita no longer wasted her surplus
energy in wanton conceits.  Once she bucked, but it was from force
of habit; once she shied, but it was from a new freshly painted
meeting-house at the crossing of the county road.  Hollows,
ditches, gravelly deposits, patches of freshly springing grasses,
flew from beneath her rattling hoofs.  She began to smell
unpleasantly, once or twice she coughed slightly, but there was no
abatement of her strength or speed.  By two o'clock he had passed
Red Mountain and begun the descent to the plain.  Ten minutes later
the driver of the fast Pioneer coach was overtaken and passed by a
"man on a Pinto hoss,"--an event sufficiently notable for remark.
At half past two Dick rose in his stirrups with a great shout.
Stars were glittering through the rifted clouds, and beyond him,
out of the plain, rose two spires, a flagstaff, and a straggling
line of black objects.  Dick jingled his spurs and swung his riata,
Jovita bounded forward, and in another moment they swept into
Tuttleville and drew up before the wooden piazza of "The Hotel of
All Nations."

What transpired that night at Tuttleville is not strictly a part of
this record.  Briefly I may state, however, that after Jovita had
been handed over to a sleepy ostler, whom she at once kicked into
unpleasant consciousness, Dick sallied out with the bar-keeper for
a tour of the sleeping town.  Lights still gleamed from a few
saloons and gambling-houses; but, avoiding these, they stopped
before several closed shops, and by persistent tapping and
judicious outcry roused the proprietors from their beds, and made
them unbar the doors of their magazines and expose their wares.
Sometimes they were met by curses, but oftener by interest and some
concern in their needs, and the interview was invariably concluded
by a drink.  It was three o'clock before this pleasantry was given
over, and with a small waterproof bag of india-rubber strapped on
his shoulders Dick returned to the hotel.  But here he was waylaid
by Beauty,--Beauty opulent in charms, affluent in dress, persuasive
in speech, and Spanish in accent!  In vain she repeated the
invitation in "Excelsior," happily scorned by all Alpine-climbing
youth, and rejected by this child of the Sierras,--a rejection
softened in this instance by a laugh and his last gold coin.  And
then he sprang to the saddle and dashed down the lonely street and
out into the lonelier plain, where presently the lights, the black
line of houses, the spires, and the flagstaff sank into the earth
behind him again and were lost in the distance.

The storm had cleared away, the air was brisk and cold, the
outlines of adjacent landmarks were distinct, but it was half past
four before Dick reached the meeting-house and the crossing of the
county road.  To avoid the rising grade he had taken a longer and
more circuitous road, in whose viscid mud Jovita sank fetlock deep
at every bound.  It was a poor preparation for a steady ascent of
five miles more; but Jovita, gathering her legs under her, took it
with her usual blind, unreasoning fury, and a half-hour later
reached the long level that led to Rattlesnake Creek.  Another
half-hour would bring him to the creek.  He threw the reins lightly
upon the neck of the mare, chirruped to her, and began to sing.

Suddenly Jovita shied with a bound that would have unseated a less
practised rider.  Hanging to her rein was a figure that had leaped
from the bank, and at the same time from the road before her arose
a shadowy horse and rider.  "Throw up your hands," commanded this
second apparition, with an oath.

Dick felt the mare tremble, quiver, and apparently sink under him.
He knew what it meant and was prepared.

"Stand aside, Jack Simpson, I know you, you d----d thief.  Let me
pass or--"

He did not finish the sentence.  Jovita rose straight in the air
with a terrific bound, throwing the figure from her bit with a
single shake of her vicious head, and charged with deadly
malevolence down on the impediment before her.  An oath, a pistol-
shot, horse and highwayman rolled over in the road, and the next
moment Jovita was a hundred yards away.  But the good right arm of
her rider, shattered by a bullet, dropped helplessly at his side.

Without slacking his speed he shifted the reins to his left hand.
But a few moments later he was obliged to halt and tighten the
saddle-girths that had slipped in the onset.  This in his crippled
condition took some time.  He had no fear of pursuit, but looking
up he saw that the eastern stars were already paling, and that the
distant peaks had lost their ghostly whiteness, and now stood out
blackly against a lighter sky.  Day was upon him.  Then completely
absorbed in a single idea, he forgot the pain of his wound, and
mounting again dashed on toward Rattlesnake Creek.  But now
Jovita's breath came broken by gasps, Dick reeled in his saddle,
and brighter and brighter grew the sky.

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

For the last few rods there was a roaring in his ears.  Was it
exhaustion from loss of blood, or what?  He was dazed and giddy as
he swept down the hill, and did not recognize his surroundings.
Had he taken the wrong road, or was this Rattlesnake Creek?

It was.  But the brawling creek he had swam a few hours before had
risen, more than doubled its volume, and now rolled a swift and
resistless river between him and Rattlesnake Hill.  For the first
time that night Richard's heart sank within him.  The river, the
mountain, the quickening east, swam before his eyes.  He shut them
to recover his self-control.  In that brief interval, by some
fantastic mental process, the little room at Simpson's Bar and the
figures of the sleeping father and son rose upon him.  He opened
his eyes wildly, cast off his coat, pistol, boots, and saddle,
bound his precious pack tightly to his shoulders, grasped the bare
flanks of Jovita with his bared knees, and with a shout dashed into
the yellow water.  A cry rose from the opposite bank as the head of
a man and horse struggled for a few moments against the battling
current, and then were swept away amidst uprooted trees and
whirling drift-wood.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

The Old Man started and woke.  The fire on the hearth was dead, the
candle in the outer room flickering in its socket, and somebody was
rapping at the door.  He opened it, but fell back with a cry before
the dripping half-naked figure that reeled against the doorpost.

"Dick?"

"Hush!  Is he awake yet?"

"No,--but, Dick?--"

"Dry up, you old fool!  Get me some whiskey QUICK!"  The Old Man
flew and returned with--an empty bottle!  Dick would have sworn,
but his strength was not equal to the occasion.  He staggered,
caught at the handle of the door, and motioned to the Old Man.

"Thar's suthin' in my pack yer for Johnny.  Take it off.  I can't."

The Old Man unstrapped the pack and laid it before the exhausted
man.

"Open it, quick!"

He did so with trembling fingers.  It contained only a few poor
toys,--cheap and barbaric enough, goodness knows, but bright with
paint and tinsel.  One of them was broken; another, I fear, was
irretrievably ruined by water; and on the third--ah me! there was a
cruel spot.

"It don't look like much, that's a fact," said Dick, ruefully . . . .
"But it's the best we could do. . . .  Take 'em, Old Man, and
put 'em in his stocking, and tell him--tell him, you know--hold me,
Old Man--"  The Old Man caught at his sinking figure.  "Tell him,"
said Dick, with a weak little laugh,--"tell him Sandy Claus has
come."


And even so, bedraggled, ragged, unshaven and unshorn, with one arm
hanging helplessly at his side, Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar
and fell fainting on the first threshold.  The Christmas dawn came
slowly after, touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth of
ineffable love.  And it looked so tenderly on Simpson's Bar that
the whole mountain as if caught in a generous action, blushed to
the skies.



THE PRINCESS BOB AND HER FRIENDS.


She was a Klamath Indian.  Her title was, I think, a compromise
between her claim as daughter of a chief, and gratitude to her
earliest white protector, whose name, after the Indian fashion, she
had adopted.  "Bob" Walker had taken her from the breast of her
dead mother at a time when the sincere volunteer soldiery of the
California frontier were impressed with the belief that extermination
was the manifest destiny of the Indian race.  He had with difficulty
restrained the noble zeal of his compatriots long enough to convince
them that the exemption of one Indian baby would not invalidate this
theory.  And he took her to his home,--a pastoral clearing on the
banks of the Salmon River,--where she was cared for after a frontier
fashion.

Before she was nine years old, she had exhausted the scant
kindliness of the thin, overworked Mrs. Walker.  As a playfellow of
the young Walkers she was unreliable; as a nurse for the baby she
was inefficient.  She lost the former in the trackless depths of a
redwood forest; she basely abandoned the latter in an extemporized
cradle, hanging like a chrysalis to a convenient bough.  She lied
and she stole,--two unpardonable sins in a frontier community,
where truth was a necessity and provisions were the only property.
Worse than this, the outskirts of the clearing were sometimes
haunted by blanketed tatterdemalions with whom she had mysterious
confidences.  Mr. Walker more than once regretted his indiscreet
humanity; but she presently relieved him of responsibility, and
possibly of bloodguiltiness, by disappearing entirely.

When she reappeared, it was at the adjacent village of Logport, in
the capacity of housemaid to a trader's wife, who, joining some
little culture to considerable conscientiousness, attempted to
instruct her charge.  But the Princess proved an unsatisfactory
pupil to even so liberal a teacher.  She accepted the alphabet with
great good-humor, but always as a pleasing and recurring novelty,
in which all interest expired at the completion of each lesson.
She found a thousand uses for her books and writing materials other
than those known to civilized children.  She made a curious
necklace of bits of slate-pencil, she constructed a miniature canoe
from the pasteboard covers of her primer, she bent her pens into
fish-hooks, and tattooed the faces of her younger companions with
blue ink.  Religious instruction she received as good-humoredly,
and learned to pronounce the name of the Deity with a cheerful
familiarity that shocked her preceptress.  Nor could her reverence
be reached through analogy; she knew nothing of the Great Spirit,
and professed entire ignorance of the Happy Hunting-Grounds.  Yet
she attended divine service regularly, and as regularly asked for a
hymn-book; and it was only through the discovery that she had
collected twenty-five of these volumes and had hidden them behind
the woodpile, that her connection with the First Baptist Church of
Logport ceased.  She would occasionally abandon these civilized and
Christian privileges, and disappear from her home, returning after
several days of absence with an odor of bark and fish, and a peace-
offering to her mistress in the shape of venison or game.

To add to her troubles, she was now fourteen, and, according to the
laws of her race, a woman.  I do not think the most romantic fancy
would have called her pretty.  Her complexion defied most of those
ambiguous similes through which poets unconsciously apologize for
any deviation from the Caucasian standard.  It was not wine nor
amber colored; if anything, it was smoky.  Her face was tattooed
with red and white lines on one cheek, as if a duo-toothed comb had
been drawn from cheek-bone to jaw, and, but for the good-humor that
beamed from her small berry-like eyes and shone in her white teeth,
would have been repulsive.  She was short and stout.  In her scant
drapery and unrestrained freedom she was hardly statuesque, and her
more unstudied attitudes were marred by a simian habit of softly
scratching her left ankle with the toes of her right foot, in
moments of contemplation.

I think I have already shown enough to indicate the incongruity of
her existence with even the low standard of civilization that
obtained at Logport in the year 1860.  It needed but one more fact
to prove the far-sighted poetical sagacity and prophetic ethics of
those sincere advocates of extermination, to whose virtues I have
done but scant justice in the beginning of this article.  This fact
was presently furnished by the Princess.  After one of her
periodical disappearances,--this time unusually prolonged,--she
astonished Logport by returning with a half-breed baby of a week
old in her arms.  That night a meeting of the hard-featured serious
matrons of Logport was held at Mrs. Brown's.  The immediate
banishment of the Princess was demanded.  Soft-hearted Mrs. Brown
endeavored vainly to get a mitigation or suspension of the
sentence.  But, as on a former occasion, the Princess took matters
into her own hands.  A few mornings afterwards, a wicker cradle
containing an Indian baby was found hanging on the handle of the
door of the First Baptist Church.  It was the Parthian arrow of the
flying Princess.  From that day Logport knew her no more.


It had been a bright clear day on the upland, so clear that the
ramparts of Fort Jackson and the flagstaff were plainly visible
twelve miles away from the long curving peninsula that stretched a
bared white arm around the peaceful waters of Logport Bay.  It had
been a clear day upon the sea-shore, albeit the air was filled with
the flying spume and shifting sand of a straggling beach whose low
dunes were dragged down by the long surges of the Pacific and
thrown up again by the tumultuous trade-winds.  But the sun had
gone down in a bank of fleecy fog that was beginning to roll in
upon the beach.  Gradually the headland at the entrance of the
harbor and the lighthouse disappeared, then the willow fringe that
marked the line of Salmon River vanished, and the ocean was gone.
A few sails still gleamed on the waters of the bay; but the
advancing fog wiped them out one by one, crept across the steel-
blue expanse, swallowed up the white mills and single spire of
Logport, and, joining with reinforcements from the marshes, moved
solemnly upon the hills.  Ten minutes more and the landscape was
utterly blotted out; simultaneously the wind died away, and a
death-like silence stole over sea and shore.  The faint clang, high
overhead, of unseen brent, the nearer call of invisible plover, the
lap and wash of undistinguishable waters, and the monotonous roll
of the vanished ocean, were the only sounds.  As night deepened,
the far-off booming of the fog-bell on the headland at intervals
stirred the thick air.

Hard by the shore of the bay, and half hidden by a drifting sand-
hill, stood a low nondescript structure, to whose composition sea
and shore had equally contributed.  It was built partly of logs and
partly of driftwood and tarred canvas.  Joined to one end of the
main building--the ordinary log-cabin of the settler--was the half-
round pilot-house of some wrecked steamer, while the other gable
terminated in half of a broken whale-boat.  Nailed against the boat
were the dried skins of wild animals, and scattered about lay the
flotsam and jetsam of many years' gathering,--bamboo crates, casks,
hatches, blocks, oars, boxes, part of a whale's vertebrae, and the
blades of sword-fish.  Drawn up on the beach of a little cove
before the house lay a canoe.  As the night thickened and the fog
grew more dense, these details grew imperceptible, and only the
windows of the pilot-house, lit up by a roaring fire within the
hut, gleamed redly through the mist.

By this fire, beneath a ship's lamp that swung from the roof, two
figures were seated, a man and a woman.  The man, broad-shouldered
and heavily bearded, stretched his listless powerful length beyond
a broken bamboo chair, with his eyes fixed on the fire.  The woman
crouched cross-legged upon the broad earthen hearth, with her eyes
blinkingly fixed on her companion.  They were small, black, round,
berry-like eyes, and as the firelight shone upon her smoky face,
with its one striped cheek of gorgeous brilliancy, it was plainly
the Princess Bob and no other.

Not a word was spoken.  They had been sitting thus for more than an
hour, and there was about their attitude a suggestion that silence
was habitual.  Once or twice the man rose and walked up and down
the narrow room, or gazed absently from the windows of the pilot-
house, but never by look or sign betrayed the slightest
consciousness of his companion.  At such times the Princess from
her nest by the fire followed him with eyes of canine expectancy
and wistfulness.  But he would as inevitably return to his
contemplation of the fire, and the Princess to her blinking
watchfulness of his face.

They had sat there silent and undisturbed for many an evening in
fair weather and foul.  They had spent many a day in sunshine and
storm, gathering the unclaimed spoil of sea and shore.  They had
kept these mute relations, varied only by the incidents of the hunt
or meagre household duties, for three years, ever since the man,
wandering moodily over the lonely sands, had fallen upon the half-
starved woman lying in the little hollow where she had crawled to
die.  It had seemed as if they would never be disturbed, until now,
when the Princess started, and, with the instinct of her race, bent
her ear to the ground.

The wind had risen and was rattling the tarred canvas.  But in
another moment there plainly came from without the hut the sound of
voices.  Then followed a rap at the door; then another rap; and
then, before they could rise to their feet, the door was flung
briskly open.

"I beg your pardon," said a pleasant but somewhat decided contralto
voice, "but I don't think you heard me knock.  Ah, I see you did
not.  May I come in?"

There was no reply.  Had the battered figurehead of the Goddess of
Liberty, which lay deeply embedded in the sand on the beach,
suddenly appeared at the door demanding admittance, the occupants
of the cabin could not have been more speechlessly and hopelessly
astonished than at the form which stood in the open doorway.

It was that of a slim, shapely, elegantly dressed young woman.  A
scarlet-lined silken hood was half thrown back from the shining
mass of the black hair that covered her small head; from her pretty
shoulders dropped a fur cloak, only restrained by a cord and tassel
in her small gloved hand.  Around her full throat was a double
necklace of large white beads, that by some cunning feminine trick
relieved with its infantile suggestion the strong decision of her
lower face.

"Did you say yes?  Ah, thank you.  We may come in, Barker."  (Here
a shadow in a blue army overcoat followed her into the cabin,
touched its cap respectfully, and then stood silent and erect
against the wall.)  "Don't disturb yourself in the least, I beg.
What a distressingly unpleasant night!  Is this your usual
climate?"

Half graciously, half absently overlooking the still embarrassed
silence of the group, she went on: "We started from the fort over
three hours ago,--three hours ago, wasn't it, Barker?" (the erect
Barker touched his cap,)--"to go to Captain Emmons's quarters on
Indian Island,--I think you call it Indian Island, don't you?" (she
was appealing to the awe-stricken Princess,)--"and we got into the
fog and lost our way; that is, Barker lost his way," (Barker
touched his cap deprecatingly,) "and goodness knows where we didn't
wander to until we mistook your light for the lighthouse and pulled
up here.  No, no, pray keep your seat, do!  Really I must insist."

Nothing could exceed the languid grace of the latter part of this
speech,--nothing except the easy unconsciousness with which she
glided by the offered chair of her stammering, embarrassed host and
stood beside the open hearth.

"Barker will tell you," she continued, warming her feet by the
fire, "that I am Miss Portfire, daughter of Major Portfire,
commanding the post.  Ah, excuse me, child!"  (She had accidentally
trodden upon the bare yellow toes of the Princess.)  "Really, I did
not know you were there.  I am very near-sighted."  (In confirmation
of her statement, she put to her eyes a dainty double eyeglass that
dangled from her neck.)  "It's a shocking thing to be near-sighted,
isn't it?"

If the shamefaced uneasy man to whom this remark was addressed
could have found words to utter the thought that even in his
confusion struggled uppermost in his mind, he would, looking at the
bold, dark eyes that questioned him, have denied the fact.  But he
only stammered, "Yes."  The next moment, however, Miss Portfire had
apparently forgotten him and was examining the Princess through her
glass.

"And what is your name, child?"

The Princess, beatified by the eyes and eyeglass, showed all her
white teeth at once, and softly scratched her leg.

"Bob?"

"Bob?  What a singular name!"

Miss Portfire's host here hastened to explain the origin of the
Princess's title.

"Then YOU are Bob."  (Eye-glass.)

"No, my name is Grey,--John Grey."  And he actually achieved a bow
where awkwardness was rather the air of imperfectly recalling a
forgotten habit.

"Grey?--ah, let me see.  Yes, certainly.  You are Mr. Grey the
recluse, the hermit, the philosopher, and all that sort of thing.
Why, certainly; Dr. Jones, our surgeon, has told me all about you.
Dear me, how interesting a rencontre!  Lived all alone here for
seven--was it seven years?--yes, I remember now.  Existed quite au
naturel, one might say.  How odd!  Not that I know anything about
that sort of thing, you know.  I've lived always among people, and
am really quite a stranger, I assure you.  But honestly, Mr.--I beg
your pardon--Mr. Grey, how do you like it?"

She had quietly taken his chair and thrown her cloak and hood over
its back, and was now thoughtfully removing her gloves.  Whatever
were the arguments,--and they were doubtless many and profound,--
whatever the experience,--and it was doubtless hard and satisfying
enough,--by which this unfortunate man had justified his life for
the last seven years, somehow they suddenly became trivial and
terribly ridiculous before this simple but practical question.

"Well, you shall tell me all about it after you have given me
something to eat.  We will have time enough; Barker cannot find his
way back in this fog to-night.  Now don't put yourselves to any
trouble on my account.  Barker will assist?"

Barker came forward.  Glad to escape the scrutiny of his guest, the
hermit gave a few rapid directions to the Princess in her native
tongue, and disappeared in the shed.  Left a moment alone, Miss
Portfire took a quick, half-audible, feminine inventory of the
cabin.  "Books, guns, skins, ONE chair, ONE bed, no pictures, and
no looking-glass!"  She took a book from the swinging shelf and
resumed her seat by the fire as the Princess re-entered with fresh
fuel.  But while kneeling on the hearth the Princess chanced to
look up and met Miss Portfire's dark eyes over the edge of her book.

"Bob!"

The Princess showed her teeth.

"Listen.  Would you like to have fine clothes, rings, and beads
like these, to have your hair nicely combed and put up so?  Would
you?"

The Princess nodded violently.

"Would you like to live with me and have them?  Answer quickly.
Don't look round for HIM.  Speak for yourself.  Would you?  Hush;
never mind now."

The hermit re-entered, and the Princess, blinking, retreated into
the shadow of the whale-boat shed, from which she did not emerge
even when the homely repast of cold venison, ship biscuit, and tea
was served.  Miss Portfire noticed her absence: "You really must
not let me interfere with your usual simple ways.  Do you know this
is exceedingly interesting to me, so pastoral and patriarchal and
all that sort of thing.  I must insist upon the Princess coming
back; really, I must."

But the Princess was not to be found in the shed, and Miss
Portfire, who the next minute seemed to have forgotten all about
her, took her place in the single chair before an extemporized
table.  Barker stood behind her, and the hermit leaned against the
fireplace.  Miss Portfire's appetite did not come up to her
protestations.  For the first time in seven years it occurred to
the hermit that his ordinary victual might be improved.  He
stammered out something to that effect.

"I have eaten better, and worse," said Miss Portfire, quietly.

"But I thought you--that is, you said--"

"I spent a year in the hospitals, when father was on the Potomac,"
returned Miss Portfire, composedly.  After a pause she continued:
"You remember after the second Bull Run--  But, dear me!  I beg
your pardon; of course, you know nothing about the war and all that
sort of thing, and don't care."  (She put up her eye-glass and
quietly surveyed his broad muscular figure against the chimney.)
"Or, perhaps, your prejudices--  But then, as a hermit you know you
have no politics, of course.  Please don't let me bore you."

To have been strictly consistent, the hermit should have exhibited
no interest in this topic.  Perhaps it was owing to some quality in
the narrator, but he was constrained to beg her to continue in such
phrases as his unfamiliar lips could command.  So that, little by
little, Miss Portfire yielded up incident and personal observation
of the contest then raging; with the same half-abstracted, half-
unconcerned air that seemed habitual to her, she told the stories
of privation, of suffering, of endurance, and of sacrifice.  With
the same assumption of timid deference that concealed her great
self-control, she talked of principles and rights.  Apparently
without enthusiasm and without effort, of which his morbid nature
would have been suspicious, she sang the great American Iliad in a
way that stirred the depths of her solitary auditor to its massive
foundations.  Then she stopped and asked quietly, "Where is Bob?"

The hermit started.  He would look for her.  But Bob, for some
reason, was not forthcoming.  Search was made within and without
the hut, but in vain.  For the first time that evening Miss
Portfire showed some anxiety.  "Go," she said to Barker, "and find
her.  She MUST be found; stay, give me your overcoat, I'll go
myself."  She threw the overcoat over her shoulders and stepped out
into the night.  In the thick veil of fog that seemed suddenly to
inwrap her, she stood for a moment irresolute, and then walked
toward the beach, guided by the low wash of waters on the sand.
She had not taken many steps before she stumbled over some dark
crouching object.  Reaching down her hand she felt the coarse wiry
mane of the Princess.

"Bob!"

There was no reply.

"Bob.  I've been looking for you, come."

"Go 'way."

"Nonsense, Bob.  I want you to stay with me to-night, come."

"Injin squaw no good for waugee woman.  Go 'way."

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

The Princess chuckled and suffered herself to be lifted up.  A few
moments later and they re-entered the hut, hand in hand.

With the first red streaks of dawn the next day the erect Barker
touched his cap at the door of the hut.  Beside him stood the
hermit, also just risen from his blanketed nest in the sand.  Forth
from the hut, fresh as the morning air, stepped Miss Portfire,
leading the Princess by the hand.  Hand in hand also they walked to
the shore, and when the Princess had been safely bestowed in the
stern sheets, Miss Portfire turned and held out her own to her late
host.

"I shall take the best of care of her, of course.  You will come
and see her often.  I should ask you to come and see me, but you
are a hermit, you know, and all that sort of thing.  But if it's
the correct anchorite thing, and can be done, my father will be
glad to requite you for this night's hospitality.  But don't do
anything on my account that interferes with your simple habits.
Good by."

She handed him a card, which he took mechanically.

"Good by."

The sail was hoisted, and the boat shoved off.  As the fresh
morning breeze caught the white canvas it seemed to bow a parting
salutation.  There was a rosy flash of promise on the water, and as
the light craft darted forward toward the ascending sun, it seemed
for a moment uplifted in its glory.


Miss Portfire kept her word.  If thoughtful care and intelligent
kindness could regenerate the Princess, her future was secure.  And
it really seemed as if she were for the first time inclined to heed
the lessons of civilization and profit by her new condition.  An
agreeable change was first noticed in her appearance.  Her lawless
hair was caught in a net, and no longer strayed over her low
forehead.  Her unstable bust was stayed and upheld by French
corsets; her plantigrade shuffle was limited by heeled boots.  Her
dresses were neat and clean, and she wore a double necklace of
glass beads.  With this physical improvement there also seemed some
moral awakening.  She no longer stole nor lied.  With the
possession of personal property came a respect for that of others.
With increased dependence on the word of those about her came a
thoughtful consideration of her own.  Intellectually she was still
feeble, although she grappled sturdily with the simple lessons
which Miss Portfire set before her.  But her zeal and simple vanity
outran her discretion, and she would often sit for hours with an
open book before her, which she could not read.  She was a favorite
with the officers at the fort, from the Major, who shared his
daughter's prejudices and often yielded to her powerful self-will,
to the subalterns, who liked her none the less that their natural
enemies, the frontier volunteers, had declared war against her
helpless sisterhood.  The only restraint put upon her was the
limitation of her liberty to the enclosure of the fort and parade;
and only once did she break this parole, and was stopped by the
sentry as she stepped into a boat at the landing.

The recluse did not avail himself of Miss Portfire's invitation.
But after the departure of the Princess he spent less of his time
in the hut, and was more frequently seen in the distant marshes of
Eel River and on the upland hills.  A feverish restlessness, quite
opposed to his usual phlegm, led him into singular freaks strangely
inconsistent with his usual habits and reputation.  The purser of
the occasional steamer which stopped at Logport with the mails
reported to have been boarded, just inside the bar, by a strange
bearded man, who asked for a newspaper containing the last war
telegrams.  He tore his red shirt into narrow strips, and spent two
days with his needle over the pieces and the tattered remnant of
his only white garment; and a few days afterward the fishermen on
the bay were surprised to see what, on nearer approach, proved to
be a rude imitation of the national flag floating from a spar above
the hut.

One evening, as the fog began to drift over the sand-hills, the
recluse sat alone in his hut.  The fire was dying unheeded on the
hearth, for he had been sitting there for a long time, completely
absorbed in the blurred pages of an old newspaper.  Presently he
arose, and, refolding it,--an operation of great care and delicacy
in its tattered condition,--placed it under the blankets of his
bed.  He resumed his seat by the fire, but soon began drumming with
his fingers on the arm of his chair.  Eventually this assumed the
time and accent of some air.  Then he began to whistle softly and
hesitatingly, as if trying to recall a forgotten tune.  Finally
this took shape in a rude resemblance, not unlike that which his
flag bore to the national standard, to Yankee Doodle.  Suddenly he
stopped.

There was an unmistakable rapping at the door.  The blood which had
at first rushed to his face now forsook it and settled slowly
around his heart.  He tried to rise, but could not.  Then the door
was flung open, and a figure with a scarlet-lined hood and fur
mantle stood on the threshold.  With a mighty effort he took one
stride to the door.  The next moment he saw the wide mouth and
white teeth of the Princess, and was greeted by a kiss that felt
like a baptism.

To tear the hood and mantle from her figure in the sudden fury that
seized him, and to fiercely demand the reason of this masquerade,
was his only return to her greeting.  "Why are you here? did you
steal these garments?" he again demanded in her guttural language,
as he shook her roughly by the arm.  The Princess hung her head.
"Did you?" he screamed, as he reached wildly for his rifle.

"I did?"

His hold relaxed, and he staggered back against the wall.  The
Princess began to whimper.  Between her sobs, she was trying to
explain that the Major and his daughter were going away, and that
they wanted to send her to the Reservation; but he cut her short.
"Take off those things!"  The Princess tremblingly obeyed.  He
rolled them up, placed them in the canoe she had just left, and
then leaped into the frail craft.  She would have followed, but
with a great oath he threw her from him, and with one stroke of his
paddle swept out into the fog, and was gone.

"Jessamy," said the Major, a few days after, as he sat at dinner
with his daughter, "I think I can tell you something to match the
mysterious disappearance and return of your wardrobe.  Your crazy
friend, the recluse, has enlisted this morning in the Fourth
Artillery.  He's a splendid-looking animal, and there's the right
stuff for a soldier in him, if I'm not mistaken.  He's in earnest
too, for he enlists in the regiment ordered back to Washington.
Bless me, child, another goblet broken; you'll ruin the mess in
glassware, at this rate!"

"Have you heard anything more of the Princess, papa?"

"Nothing, but perhaps it's as well that she has gone.  These cursed
settlers are at their old complaints again about what they call
'Indian depredations,' and I have just received orders from head-
quarters to keep the settlement clear of all vagabond aborigines.
I am afraid, my dear, that a strict construction of the term would
include your protegee."

The time for the departure of the Fourth Artillery had come.  The
night before was thick and foggy.  At one o'clock, a shot on the
ramparts called out the guard and roused the sleeping garrison.
The new sentry, Private Grey, had challenged a dusky figure
creeping on the glacis, and, receiving no answer, had fired.  The
guard sent out presently returned, bearing a lifeless figure in
their arms.  The new sentry's zeal, joined with an ex-frontiersman's
aim, was fatal.

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

"Georgy!" she whispered.

"Bob!"

"All's same now.  Me get plenty well soon.  Me make no more fuss.
Me go to Reservation."

Then she stopped, a tremor ran through her limbs, and she lay
still.  She had gone to the Reservation.  Not that devised by the
wisdom of man, but that one set apart from the foundation of the
world for the wisest as well as the meanest of His creatures.



THE ILIAD OF SANDY BAR.


Before nine o'clock it was pretty well known all along the river
that the two partners of the "Amity Claim" had quarrelled and
separated at daybreak.  At that time the attention of their nearest
neighbor had been attracted by the sounds of altercations and two
consecutive pistol-shots.  Running out, he had seen, dimly, in the
gray mist that rose from the river, the tall form of Scott, one of
the partners, descending the hill toward the canyon; a moment
later, York, the other partner, had appeared from the cabin, and
walked in an opposite direction toward the river, passing within a
few feet of the curious watcher.  Later it was discovered that a
serious Chinaman, cutting wood before the cabin, had witnessed part
of the quarrel.  But John was stolid, indifferent, and reticent.
"Me choppee wood, me no fightee," was his serene response to all
anxious queries.  "But what did they SAY, John?"  John did not
sabe.  Colonel Starbottle deftly ran over the various popular
epithets which a generous public sentiment might accept as
reasonable provocation for an assault.  But John did not recognize
them.  "And this yer's the cattle," said the Colonel, with some
severity, "that some thinks oughter be allowed to testify ag'in' a
White Man!  Git--you heathen!"

Still the quarrel remained inexplicable.  That two men, whose
amiability and grave tact had earned for them the title of "The
Peacemakers," in a community not greatly given to the passive
virtues,--that these men, singularly devoted to each other, should
suddenly and violently quarrel, might well excite the curiosity of
the camp.  A few of the more inquisitive visited the late scene of
conflict, now deserted by its former occupants.  There was no trace
of disorder or confusion in the neat cabin.  The rude table was
arranged as if for breakfast; the pan of yellow biscuit still sat
upon that hearth whose dead embers might have typified the evil
passions that had raged there but an hour before.  But Colonel
Starbottle's eye--albeit somewhat bloodshot and rheumy--was more
intent on practical details.  On examination, a bullet-hole was
found in the doorpost, and another, nearly opposite, in the casing
of the window.  The Colonel called attention to the fact that the
one "agreed with" the bore of Scott's revolver, and the other with
that of York's derringer.  "They must hev stood about yer," said
the Colonel, taking position; "not mor'n three feet apart, and--
missed!"  There was a fine touch of pathos in the falling inflection
of the Colonel's voice, which was not without effect.  A delicate
perception of wasted opportunity thrilled his auditors.

But the Bar was destined to experience a greater disappointment.
The two antagonists had not met since the quarrel, and it was
vaguely rumored that, on the occasion of a second meeting, each had
determined to kill the other "on sight."  There was, consequently,
some excitement--and, it is to be feared, no little gratification--
when, at ten o'clock, York stepped from the Magnolia Saloon into
the one long straggling street of the camp, at the same moment that
Scott left the blacksmith's shop at the forks of the road.  It was
evident, at a glance, that a meeting could only be avoided by the
actual retreat of one or the other.

In an instant the doors and windows of the adjacent saloons were
filled with faces.  Heads unaccountably appeared above the river-
banks and from behind bowlders.  An empty wagon at the cross-road
was suddenly crowded with people, who seemed to have sprung from
the earth.  There was much running and confusion on the hillside.
On the mountain-road, Mr. Jack Hamlin had reined up his horse, and
was standing upright on the seat of his buggy.  And the two objects
of this absorbing attention approached each other.

"York's got the sun," "Scott'll line him on that tree," "He's
waitin' to draw his fire," came from the cart; and then it was
silent.  But above this human breathlessness the river rushed and
sang, and the wind rustled the tree-tops with an indifference that
seemed obtrusive.  Colonel Starbottle felt it, and in a moment of
sublime preoccupation, without looking around, waved his cane
behind him, warningly to all nature, and said, "Shu!"

The men were now within a few feet of each other.  A hen ran across
the road before one of them.  A feathery seed-vessel, wafted from a
wayside tree, fell at the feet of the other.  And, unheeding this
irony of nature, the two opponents came nearer, erect and rigid,
looked in each other's eyes, and--passed!

Colonel Starbottle had to be lifted from the cart.  "This yer camp
is played out," he said, gloomily, as he affected to be supported
into the Magnolia.  With what further expression he might have
indicated his feelings it was impossible to say, for at that moment
Scott joined the group.  "Did you speak to me?" he asked of the
Colonel, dropping his hand, as if with accidental familiarity, on
that gentleman's shoulder.  The Colonel, recognizing some occult
quality in the touch, and some unknown quantity in the glance of
his questioner, contented himself by replying, "No, sir," with
dignity.  A few rods away, York's conduct was as characteristic and
peculiar.  "You had a mighty fine chance; why didn't you plump
him?" said Jack Hamlin, as York drew near the buggy.  "Because I
hate him," was the reply, heard only by Jack.  Contrary to popular
belief, this reply was not hissed between the lips of the speaker,
but was said in an ordinary tone.  But Jack Hamlin, who was an
observer of mankind, noticed that the speaker's hands were cold,
and his lips dry, as he helped him into the buggy, and accepted the
seeming paradox with a smile.


When Sandy Bar became convinced that the quarrel between York and
Scott could not be settled after the usual local methods, it gave
no further concern thereto.  But presently it was rumored that the
"Amity Claim" was in litigation, and that its possession would be
expensively disputed by each of the partners.  As it was well known
that the claim in question was "worked out" and worthless, and that
the partners, whom it had already enriched, had talked of abandoning
it but a day or two before the quarrel, this proceeding could only
be accounted for as gratuitous spite.  Later, two San Francisco
lawyers made their appearance in this guileless Arcadia, and were
eventually taken into the saloons, and--what was pretty much the
same thing--the confidences of the inhabitants.  The results of this
unhallowed intimacy were many subpoenas; and, indeed, when the
"Amity Claim" came to trial, all of Sandy Bar that was not in
compulsory attendance at the county seat came there from curiosity.
The gulches and ditches for miles around were deserted.  I do not
propose to describe that already famous trial.  Enough that, in the
language of the plaintiff's counsel, "it was one of no ordinary
significance, involving the inherent rights of that untiring
industry which had developed the Pactolian resources of this golden
land"; and, in the homelier phrase of Colonel Starbottle, "A fuss
that gentlemen might hev settled in ten minutes over a social glass,
ef they meant business; or in ten seconds with a revolver, ef they
meant fun."  Scott got a verdict, from which York instantly
appealed.  It was said that he had sworn to spend his last dollar in
the struggle.

In this way Sandy Bar began to accept the enmity of the former
partners as a lifelong feud, and the fact that they had ever been
friends was forgotten.  The few who expected to learn from the
trial the origin of the quarrel were disappointed.  Among the
various conjectures, that which ascribed some occult feminine
influence as the cause was naturally popular, in a camp given to
dubious compliment of the sex.  "My word for it, gentlemen," said
Colonel Starbottle, who had been known in Sacramento as a Gentleman
of the Old School, "there's some lovely creature at the bottom of
this."  The gallant Colonel then proceeded to illustrate his
theory, by divers sprightly stories, such as Gentlemen of the Old
School are in the habit of repeating, but which, from deference to
the prejudices of gentlemen of a more recent school, I refrain from
transcribing here.  But it would appear that even the Colonel's
theory was fallacious.  The only woman who personally might have
exercised any influence over the partners was the pretty daughter
of "old man Folinsbee," of Poverty Flat, at whose hospitable house--
which exhibited some comforts and refinements rare in that crude
civilization--both York and Scott were frequent visitors.  Yet into
this charming retreat York strode one evening, a month after the
quarrel, and, beholding Scott sitting there, turned to the fair
hostess with the abrupt query, "Do you love this man?"  The young
woman thus addressed returned that answer--at once spirited and
evasive--which would occur to most of my fair readers in such an
exigency.  Without another word, York left the house.  "Miss Jo"
heaved the least possible sigh as the door closed on York's curls
and square shoulders, and then, like a good girl, turned to her
insulted guest "But would you believe it, dear?" she afterward
related to an intimate friend, "the other creature, after glowering
at me for a moment, got upon its hind legs, took its hat, and left,
too; and that's the last I've seen of either."

The same hard disregard of all other interests or feelings in the
gratification of their blind rancor characterized all their
actions.  When York purchased the land below Scott's new claim, and
obliged the latter, at a great expense, to make a long detour to
carry a "tail-race" around it, Scott retaliated by building a dam
that overflowed York's claim on the river.  It was Scott, who, in
conjunction with Colonel Starbottle, first organized that active
opposition to the Chinamen, which resulted in the driving off of
York's Mongolian laborers; it was York who built the wagon-road and
established the express which rendered Scott's mules and pack-
trains obsolete; it was Scott who called into life the Vigilance
Committee which expatriated York's friend, Jack Hamlin; it was York
who created the "Sandy Bar Herald," which characterized the act as
"a lawless outrage," and Scott as a "Border Ruffian"; it was Scott,
at the head of twenty masked men, who, one moonlight night, threw
the offending "forms" into the yellow river, and scattered the
types in the dusty road.  These proceedings were received in the
distant and more civilized outlying towns as vague indications of
progress and vitality.  I have before me a copy of the "Poverty
Flat Pioneer," for the week ending August 12, 1856, in which the
editor, under the head of "County Improvements," says: "The new
Presbyterian Church on C Street, at Sandy Bar, is completed.  It
stands upon the lot formerly occupied by the Magnolia Saloon, which
was so mysteriously burnt last month.  The temple, which now rises
like a Phoenix from the ashes of the Magnolia, is virtually the
free gift of H. J. York, Esq., of Sandy Bar, who purchased the lot
and donated the lumber.  Other buildings are going up in the
vicinity, but the most noticeable is the 'Sunny South Saloon,'
erected by Captain Mat. Scott, nearly opposite the church.  Captain
Scott has spared no expense in the furnishing of this saloon, which
promises to be one of the most agreeable places of resort in old
Tuolumne.  He has recently imported two new, first-class billiard-
tables, with cork cushions.  Our old friend, 'Mountain Jimmy,' will
dispense liquors at the bar.  We refer our readers to the
advertisement in another column.  Visitors to Sandy Bar cannot do
better than give 'Jimmy' a call."  Among the local items occurred
the following: "H. J. York, Esq., of Sandy Bar, has offered a
reward of $100 for the detection of the parties who hauled away the
steps of the new Presbyterian Church, C Street, Sandy Bar, during
divine service on Sabbath evening last.  Captain Scott adds another
hundred for the capture of the miscreants who broke the magnificent
plate-glass windows of the new saloon on the following evening.
There is some talk of reorganizing the old Vigilance Committee at
Sandy Bar."

When, for many months of cloudless weather, the hard, unwinking sun
of Sandy Bar had regularly gone down on the unpacified wrath of
these men, there was some talk of mediation.  In particular, the
pastor of the church to which I have just referred--a sincere,
fearless, but perhaps not fully enlightened man--seized gladly upon
the occasion of York's liberality to attempt to reunite the former
partners.  He preached an earnest sermon on the abstract sinfulness
of discord and rancor.  But the excellent sermons of the Rev. Mr.
Daws were directed to an ideal congregation that did not exist at
Sandy Bar,--a congregation of beings of unmixed vices and virtues,
of single impulses, and perfectly logical motives, of preternatural
simplicity, of childlike faith, and grown-up responsibilities.  As,
unfortunately, the people who actually attended Mr. Daws's church
were mainly very human, somewhat artful, more self-excusing than
self-accusing, rather good-natured, and decidedly weak, they
quietly shed that portion of the sermon which referred to
themselves, and, accepting York and Scott--who were both in defiant
attendance--as curious examples of those ideal beings above
referred to, felt a certain satisfaction--which, I fear, was not
altogether Christian-like--in their "raking-down."  If Mr. Daws
expected York and Scott to shake hands after the sermon, he was
disappointed.  But he did not relax his purpose.  With that quiet
fearlessness and determination which had won for him the respect of
men who were too apt to regard piety as synonymous with effeminacy,
he attacked Scott in his own house.  What he said has not been
recorded, but it is to be feared that it was part of his sermon.
When he had concluded, Scott looked at him, not unkindly, over the
glasses of his bar, and said, less irreverently than the words
might convey, "Young man, I rather like your style; but when you
know York and me as well as you do God Almighty, it'll be time to
talk."

And so the feud progressed; and so, as in more illustrious
examples, the private and personal enmity of two representative men
led gradually to the evolution of some crude, half-expressed
principle or belief.  It was not long before it was made evident
that those beliefs were identical with certain broad principles
laid down by the founders of the American Constitution, as
expounded by the statesmanlike A; or were the fatal quicksands, on
which the ship of state might be wrecked, warningly pointed out by
the eloquent B.  The practical result of all which was the
nomination of York and Scott to represent the opposite factions of
Sandy Bar in legislative councils.

For some weeks past, the voters of Sandy Bar and the adjacent camps
had been called upon, in large type, to "RALLY!"  In vain the great
pines at the cross-roads--whose trunks were compelled to bear this
and other legends--moaned and protested from their windy watch-
towers.  But one day, with fife and drum, and flaming transparency,
a procession filed into the triangular grove at the head of the
gulch.  The meeting was called to order by Colonel Starbottle, who,
having once enjoyed legislative functions, and being vaguely known
as a "war-horse," was considered to be a valuable partisan of York.
He concluded an appeal for his friend, with an enunciation of
principles, interspersed with one or two anecdotes so gratuitously
coarse that the very pines might have been moved to pelt him with
their cast-off cones, as he stood there.  But he created a laugh,
on which his candidate rode into popular notice; and when York rose
to speak, he was greeted with cheers.  But, to the general
astonishment, the new speaker at once launched into bitter
denunciation of his rival.  He not only dwelt upon Scott's deeds
and example, as known to Sandy Bar, but spoke of facts connected
with his previous career, hitherto unknown to his auditors.  To
great precision of epithet and directness of statement, the speaker
added the fascination of revelation and exposure.  The crowd
cheered, yelled, and were delighted, but when this astounding
philippic was concluded, there was a unanimous call for "Scott!"
Colonel Starbottle would have resisted this manifest impropriety,
but in vain.  Partly from a crude sense of justice, partly from a
meaner craving for excitement, the assemblage was inflexible; and
Scott was dragged, pushed, and pulled upon the platform.

As his frowsy head and unkempt beard appeared above the railing, it
was evident that he was drunk.  But it was also evident, before he
opened his lips, that the orator of Sandy Bar--the one man who
could touch their vagabond sympathies (perhaps because he was not
above appealing to them)--stood before them.  A consciousness of
this power lent a certain dignity to his figure, and I am not sure
but that his very physical condition impressed them as a kind of
regal unbending and large condescension.  Howbeit, when this
unexpected Hector arose from the ditch, York's myrmidons trembled.

"There's naught, gentlemen," said Scott, leaning forward on the
railing,--"there's naught as that man hez said as isn't true.  I
was run outer Cairo; I did belong to the Regulators; I did desert
from the army; I did leave a wife in Kansas.  But thar's one thing
he didn't charge me with, and, maybe, he's forgotten.  For three
years, gentlemen, I was that man's pardner!--"  Whether he intended
to say more, I cannot tell; a burst of applause artistically
rounded and enforced the climax, and virtually elected the speaker.
That fall he went to Sacramento, York went abroad; and for the
first time in many years, distance and a new atmosphere isolated
the old antagonists.


With little of change in the green wood, gray rock, and yellow
river, but with much shifting of human landmarks, and new faces in
its habitations, three years passed over Sandy Bar.  The two men,
once so identified with its character, seemed to have been quite
forgotten.  "You will never return to Sandy Bar," said Miss
Folinsbee, the "Lily of Poverty Flat," on meeting York in Paris,
"for Sandy Bar is no more.  They call it Riverside now; and the new
town is built higher up on the river-bank.  By the by, 'Jo' says
that Scott has won his suit about the 'Amity Claim,' and that he
lives in the old cabin, and is drunk half his time.  O, I beg your
pardon," added the lively lady, as a flush crossed York's sallow
cheek; "but, bless me, I really thought that old grudge was made
up.  I'm sure it ought to be."

It was three months after this conversation, and a pleasant summer
evening, that the Poverty Flat coach drew up before the veranda of
the Union Hotel at Sandy Bar.  Among its passengers was one,
apparently a stranger, in the local distinction of well-fitting
clothes and closely shaven face, who demanded a private room and
retired early to rest.  But before sunrise next morning he arose,
and, drawing some clothes from his carpet-bag, proceeded to array
himself in a pair of white duck trousers, a white duck overshirt,
and straw hat.  When his toilet was completed, he tied a red
bandanna handkerchief in a loop and threw it loosely over his
shoulders.  The transformation was complete.  As he crept softly
down the stairs and stepped into the road, no one would have
detected in him the elegant stranger of the previous night, and but
few have recognized the face and figure of Henry York of Sandy Bar.

In the uncertain light of that early hour, and in the change that
had come over the settlement, he had to pause for a moment to
recall where he stood.  The Sandy Bar of his recollection lay below
him, nearer the river; the buildings around him were of later date
and newer fashion.  As he strode toward the river, he noticed here
a schoolhouse and there a church.  A little farther on, "The Sunny
South" came in view, transformed into a restaurant, its gilding
faded and its paint rubbed off.  He now knew where he was; and,
running briskly down a declivity, crossed a ditch, and stood upon
the lower boundary of the Amity Claim.

The gray mist was rising slowly from the river, clinging to the
tree-tops and drifting up the mountain-side, until it was caught
among those rocky altars, and held a sacrifice to the ascending
sun.  At his feet the earth, cruelly gashed and scarred by his
forgotten engines, had, since the old days, put on a show of
greenness here and there, and now smiled forgivingly up at him, as
if things were not so bad after all.  A few birds were bathing in
the ditch with a pleasant suggestion of its being a new and special
provision of nature, and a hare ran into an inverted sluice-box, as
he approached, as if it were put there for that purpose.

He had not yet dared to look in a certain direction.  But the sun
was now high enough to paint the little eminence on which the cabin
stood.  In spite of his self-control, his heart beat faster as he
raised his eyes toward it.  Its window and door were closed, no
smoke came from its adobe chimney, but it was else unchanged.  When
within a few yards of it, he picked up a broken shovel, and,
shouldering it with a smile, strode toward the door and knocked.
There was no sound from within.  The smile died upon his lips as he
nervously pushed the door open.

A figure started up angrily and came toward him,--a figure whose
bloodshot eyes suddenly fixed into a vacant stare, whose arms were
at first outstretched and then thrown up in warning gesticulation,--
a figure that suddenly gasped, choked, and then fell forward in a
fit.

But before he touched the ground, York had him out into the open
air and sunshine.  In the struggle, both fell and rolled over on
the ground.  But the next moment York was sitting up, holding the
convulsed frame of his former partner on his knee, and wiping the
foam from his inarticulate lips.  Gradually the tremor became less
frequent, and then ceased; and the strong man lay unconscious in
his arms.

For some moments York held him quietly thus, looking in his face.
Afar, the stroke of a wood-man's axe--a mere phantom of sound--was
all that broke the stillness.  High up the mountain, a wheeling
hawk hung breathlessly above them.  And then came voices, and two
men joined them.

"A fight?"  No, a fit; and would they help him bring the sick man
to the hotel?

And there, for a week, the stricken partner lay, unconscious of
aught but the visions wrought by disease and fear.  On the eighth
day, at sunrise, he rallied, and, opening his eyes, looked upon
York, and pressed his hand; then he spoke:--

"And it's you.  I thought it was only whiskey."

York replied by taking both of his hands, boyishly working them
backward and forward, as his elbow rested on the bed, with a
pleasant smile.

"And you've been abroad.  How did you like Paris?"

"So, so.  How did YOU like Sacramento?"

"Bully."

And that was all they could think to say.  Presently Scott opened
his eyes again.

"I'm mighty weak."

"You'll get better soon."

"Not much."

A long silence followed, in which they could hear the sounds of
wood-chopping, and that Sandy Bar was already astir for the coming
day.  Then Scott slowly and with difficulty turned his face to
York, and said,--

"I might hev killed you once."

"I wish you had."

They pressed each other's hands again, but Scott's grasp was
evidently failing.  He seemed to summon his energies for a special
effort.

"Old man!"

"Old chap."

"Closer!"

York bent his head toward the slowly fading face.

"Do ye mind that morning?"

"Yes."

A gleam of fun slid into the corner of Scott's blue eye, as he
whispered,--

"Old man, thar WAS too much saleratus in that bread."

It is said that these were his last words.  For when the sun, which
had so often gone down upon the idle wrath of these foolish men,
looked again upon them reunited, it saw the hand of Scott fall cold
and irresponsive from the yearning clasp of his former partner, and
it knew that the feud of Sandy Bar was at an end.



MR THOMPSON'S PRODIGAL


We all knew that Mr. Thompson was looking for his son, and a pretty
bad one at that.  That he was coming to California for this sole
object was no secret to his fellow-passengers; and the physical
peculiarities, as well as the moral weaknesses, of the missing
prodigal were made equally plain to us through the frank volubility
of the parent.  "You was speaking of a young man which was hung at
Red Dog for sluice-robbing," said Mr. Thompson to a steerage
passenger, one day; "be you aware of the color of his eyes?"
"Black," responded the passenger.  "Ah," said Mr. Thompson,
referring to some mental memoranda, "Char-les's eyes was blue."  He
then walked away.  Perhaps it was from this unsympathetic mode of
inquiry, perhaps it was from that Western predilection to take a
humorous view of any principle or sentiment persistently brought
before them, that Mr. Thompson's quest was the subject of some
satire among the passengers.  A gratuitous advertisement of the
missing Charles, addressed to "Jailers and Guardians," circulated
privately among them; everybody remembered to have met Charles under
distressing circumstances.  Yet it is but due to my countrymen to
state that when it was known that Thompson had embarked some wealth
in this visionary project, but little of this satire found its way
to his ears, and nothing was uttered in his hearing that might bring
a pang to a father's heart, or imperil a possible pecuniary
advantage of the satirist.  Indeed, Mr. Bracy Tibbets's jocular
proposition to form a joint-stock company to "prospect" for the
missing youth received at one time quite serious entertainment.

Perhaps to superficial criticism Mr. Thompson's nature was not
picturesque nor lovable.  His history, as imparted at dinner, one
day, by himself, was practical even in its singularity.  After a
hard and wilful youth and maturity,--in which he had buried a
broken-spirited wife, and driven his son to sea,--he suddenly
experienced religion.  "I got it in New Orleans in '59," said Mr.
Thompson, with the general suggestion of referring to an epidemic.
"Enter ye the narrer gate.  Parse me the beans."  Perhaps this
practical quality upheld him in his apparently hopeless search.  He
had no clew to the whereabouts of his runaway son; indeed, scarcely
a proof of his present existence.  From his indifferent recollection
of the boy of twelve, he now expected to identify the man of
twenty-five.

It would seem that he was successful.  How he succeeded was one of
the few things he did not tell.  There are, I believe, two versions
of the story.  One, that Mr. Thompson, visiting a hospital,
discovered his son by reason of a peculiar hymn, chanted by the
sufferer, in a delirious dream of his boyhood.  This version,
giving as it did wide range to the finer feelings of the heart, was
quite popular; and as told by the Rev. Mr. Gushington, on his
return from his California tour, never failed to satisfy an
audience.  The other was less simple, and, as I shall adopt it
here, deserves more elaboration.

It was after Mr. Thompson had given up searching for his son among
the living, and had taken to the examination of cemeteries, and a
careful inspection of the "cold hic jacets of the dead."  At this
time he was a frequent visitor of "Lone Mountain,"--a dreary hill-
top, bleak enough in its original isolation, and bleaker for the
white-faced marbles by which San Francisco anchored her departed
citizens, and kept them down in a shifting sand that refused to
cover them, and against a fierce and persistent wind that strove to
blow them utterly away.  Against this wind the old man opposed a
will quite as persistent,--a grizzled, hard face, and a tall,
crape-bound hat drawn tightly over his eyes,--and so spent days in
reading the mortuary inscriptions audibly to himself.  The
frequency of Scriptural quotation pleased him, and he was fond of
corroborating them by a pocket Bible.  "That's from Psalms," he
said, one day, to an adjacent grave-digger.  The man made no reply.
Not at all rebuffed, Mr. Thompson at once slid down into the open
grave, with a more practical inquiry, "Did you ever, in your
profession, come across Char-les Thompson?"  "Thompson be d----d!"
said the grave-digger, with great directness.  "Which, if he hadn't
religion, I think he is," responded the old man, as he clambered
out of the grave.

It was, perhaps, on this occasion that Mr. Thompson stayed later
than usual.  As he turned his face toward the city, lights were
beginning to twinkle ahead, and a fierce wind, made visible by fog,
drove him forward, or, lying in wait, charged him angrily from the
corners of deserted suburban streets.  It was on one of these
corners that something else, quite as indistinct and malevolent,
leaped upon him with an oath, a presented pistol, and a demand for
money.  But it was met by a will of iron and a grip of steel.  The
assailant and assailed rolled together on the ground.  But the next
moment the old man was erect; one hand grasping the captured
pistol, the other clutching at arm's length the throat of a figure,
surly, youthful, and savage.

"Young man," said Mr. Thompson, setting his thin lips together,
"what might be your name?"

"Thompson!"

The old man's hand slid from the throat to the arm of his prisoner,
without relaxing its firmness.

"Char-les Thompson, come with me," he said, presently, and marched
his captive to the hotel.  What took place there has not transpired,
but it was known the next morning that Mr. Thompson had found his
son.


It is proper to add to the above improbable story, that there was
nothing in the young man's appearance or manners to justify it.
Grave, reticent, and handsome, devoted to his newly found parent,
he assumed the emoluments and responsibilities of his new condition
with a certain serious ease that more nearly approached that which
San Francisco society lacked, and--rejected.  Some chose to despise
this quality as a tendency to "psalm-singing"; others saw in it the
inherited qualities of the parent, and were ready to prophesy for
the son the same hard old age.  But all agreed that it was not
inconsistent with the habits of money-getting, for which father and
son were respected.

And yet, the old man did not seem to be happy.  Perhaps it was that
the consummation of his wishes left him without a practical
mission; perhaps--and it is the more probable--he had little love
for the son he had regained.  The obedience he exacted was freely
given, the reform he had set his heart upon was complete; and yet,
somehow, it did not seem to please him.  In reclaiming his son, he
had fulfilled all the requirements that his religious duty required
of him, and yet the act seemed to lack sanctification.  In this
perplexity, he read again the parable of the Prodigal Son,--which
he had long ago adopted for his guidance,--and found that he had
omitted the final feast of reconciliation.  This seemed to offer
the proper quality of ceremoniousness in the sacrament between
himself and his son; and so, a year after the appearance of
Charles, he set about giving him a party.  "Invite everybody,
Char-les," he said, dryly; "everybody who knows that I brought
you out of the wine-husks of iniquity, and the company of harlots;
and bid them eat, drink, and be merry."

Perhaps the old man had another reason, not yet clearly analyzed.
The fine house he had built on the sand-hills sometimes seemed
lonely and bare.  He often found himself trying to reconstruct,
from the grave features of Charles, the little boy whom he but
dimly remembered in the past, and of whom lately he had been
thinking a great deal.  He believed this to be a sign of impending
old age and childishness; but coming, one day, in his formal
drawing-room, upon a child of one of the servants, who had strayed
therein, he would have taken him in his arms, but the child fled
from before his grizzled face.  So that it seemed eminently proper
to invite a number of people to his house, and, from the array of
San Francisco maidenhood, to select a daughter-in-law.  And then
there would be a child--a boy, whom he could "rare up" from the
beginning, and--love--as he did not love Charles.

We were all at the party.  The Smiths, Joneses, Browns, and
Robinsons also came, in that fine flow of animal spirits, unchecked
by any respect for the entertainer, which most of us are apt to
find so fascinating.  The proceedings would have been somewhat
riotous, but for the social position of the actors.  In fact, Mr.
Bracy Tibbets, having naturally a fine appreciation of a humorous
situation, but further impelled by the bright eyes of the Jones
girls, conducted himself so remarkably as to attract the serious
regard of Mr. Charles Thompson, who approached him, saying quietly:
"You look ill, Mr. Tibbets; let me conduct you to your carriage.
Resist, you hound, and I'll throw you through that window.  This
way, please; the room is close and distressing."  It is hardly
necessary to say that but a part of this speech was audible to the
company, and that the rest was not divulged by Mr. Tibbets, who
afterward regretted the sudden illness which kept him from
witnessing a certain amusing incident, which the fastest Miss Jones
characterized as the "richest part of the blow-out," and which I
hasten to record.

It was at supper.  It was evident that Mr. Thompson had overlooked
much lawlessness in the conduct of the younger people, in his
abstract contemplation of some impending event.  When the cloth was
removed, he rose to his feet, and grimly tapped upon the table.  A
titter, that broke out among the Jones girls, became epidemic on
one side of the board.  Charles Thompson, from the foot of the
table, looked up in tender perplexity.  "He's going to sing a
Doxology," "He's going to pray," "Silence for a speech," ran round
the room.

"It's one year to-day, Christian brothers and sisters," said Mr.
Thompson, with grim deliberation,--"one year to-day since my son
came home from eating of wine-husks and spending of his substance
on harlots."  (The tittering suddenly ceased.)  "Look at him now.
Char-les Thompson, stand up."  (Charles Thompson stood up.)  "One
year ago to-day,--and look at him now."

He was certainly a handsome prodigal, standing there in his
cheerful evening-dress,--a repentant prodigal, with sad, obedient
eyes turned upon the harsh and unsympathetic glance of his father.
The youngest Miss Smith, from the pure depths of her foolish little
heart, moved unconsciously toward him.

"It's fifteen years ago since he left my house," said Mr. Thompson,
"a rovier and a prodigal.  I was myself a man of sin, O Christian
friends,--a man of wrath and bitterness" ("Amen," from the eldest
Miss Smith),--"but praise be God, I've fled the wrath to come.
It's five years ago since I got the peace that passeth
understanding.  Have you got it, friends?"  (A general sub-chorus
of "No, no," from the girls, and, "Pass the word for it," from
Midshipman Coxe, of the U. S. sloop Wethersfield.)  "Knock, and it
shall be opened to you.

"And when I found the error of my ways, and the preciousness of
grace," continued Mr. Thompson, "I came to give it to my son.  By
sea and land I sought him far, and fainted not.  I did not wait for
him to come to me, which the same I might have done, and justified
myself by the Book of books, but I sought him out among his husks,
and--" (the rest of the sentence was lost in the rustling
withdrawal of the ladies).  "Works, Christian friends, is my motto.
By their works shall ye know them, and there is mine."

The particular and accepted work to which Mr. Thompson was alluding
had turned quite pale, and was looking fixedly toward an open door
leading to the veranda, lately filled by gaping servants, and now
the scene of some vague tumult.  As the noise continued, a man,
shabbily dressed, and evidently in liquor, broke through the
opposing guardians, and staggered into the room.  The transition
from the fog and darkness without to the glare and heat within
evidently dazzled and stupefied him.  He removed his battered hat,
and passed it once or twice before his eyes, as he steadied
himself, but unsuccessfully, by the back of a chair.  Suddenly, his
wandering glance fell upon the pale face of Charles Thompson; and
with a gleam of childlike recognition, and a weak, falsetto laugh,
he darted forward, caught at the table, upset the glasses, and
literally fell upon the prodigal's breast.

"Sha'ly! yo' d----d ol' scoun'rel, hoo rar ye!"

"Hush--sit down!--hush!" said Charles Thompson, hurriedly
endeavoring to extricate himself from the embrace of his unexpected
guest.

"Look at 'm!" continued the stranger, unheeding the admonition, but
suddenly holding the unfortunate Charles at arm's length, in loving
and undisguised admiration of his festive appearance.  "Look at 'm!
Ain't he nasty?  Sha'ls, I'm prow of yer!"

"Leave the house!" said Mr. Thompson, rising, with a dangerous look
in his cold, gray eye.  "Char-les, how dare you?"

"Simmer down, ole man!  Sha'ls, who's th' ol' bloat?  Eh?"

"Hush, man; here, take this!"  With nervous hands, Charles Thompson
filled a glass with liquor.  "Drink it and go--until to-morrow--any
time, but--leave us!--go now!"  But even then, ere the miserable
wretch could drink, the old man, pale with passion, was upon him.
Half carrying him in his powerful arms, half dragging him through
the circling crowd of frightened guests, he had reached the door,
swung open by the waiting servants, when Charles Thompson started
from a seeming stupor, crying,--

"Stop!"

The old man stopped.  Through the open door the fog and wind drove
chilly.  "What does this mean?" he asked, turning a baleful face on
Charles.

"Nothing--but stop--for God's sake.  Wait till to-morrow, but not
to-night.  Do not--I implore you--do this thing."

There was something in the tone of the young man's voice, something,
perhaps, in the contact of the struggling wretch he held in his
powerful arms; but a dim, indefinite fear took possession of the old
man's heart.  "Who," he whispered, hoarsely, "is this man?"

Charles did not answer.

"Stand back, there, all of you," thundered Mr. Thompson, to the
crowding guests around him.  "Char-les--come here!  I command you--
I--I--I--beg you--tell me WHO is this man?"

Only two persons heard the answer that came faintly from the lips
of Charles Thompson,--

"YOUR SON."


When day broke over the bleak sand-hills, the guests had departed
from Mr. Thompson's banquet-halls.  The lights still burned dimly
and coldly in the deserted rooms,--deserted by all but three
figures, that huddled together in the chill drawing-room, as if for
warmth.  One lay in drunken slumber on a couch; at his feet sat he
who had been known as Charles Thompson; and beside them, haggard
and shrunken to half his size, bowed the figure of Mr. Thompson,
his gray eye fixed, his elbows upon his knees, and his hands
clasped over his ears, as if to shut out the sad, entreating voice
that seemed to fill the room.

"God knows I did not set about to wilfully deceive.  The name I
gave that night was the first that came into my thought,--the name
of one whom I thought dead,--the dissolute companion of my shame.
And when you questioned further, I used the knowledge that I gained
from him to touch your heart to set me free; only, I swear, for
that!  But when you told me who you were, and I first saw the
opening of another life before me--then--then--  O, sir, if I was
hungry, homeless, and reckless, when I would have robbed you of
your gold, I was heart-sick, helpless, and desperate, when I would
have robbed you of your love!"

The old man stirred not.  From his luxurious couch the newly found
prodigal snored peacefully.

"I had no father I could claim.  I never knew a home but this.  I
was tempted.  I have been happy,--very happy."

He rose and stood before the old man.  "Do not fear that I shall
come between your son and his inheritance.  To-day I leave this
place, never to return.  The world is large, sir, and, thanks to
your kindness, I now see the way by which an honest livelihood is
gained.  Good by.  You will not take my hand?  Well, well.  Good
by."

He turned to go.  But when he had reached the door he suddenly came
back, and, raising with both hands the grizzled head, he kissed it
once and twice.

"Char-les."

There was no reply.

"Char-les!"

The old man rose with a frightened air, and tottered feebly to the
door.  It was open.  There came to him the awakened tumult of a
great city, in which the prodigal's footsteps were lost forever.



THE ROMANCE OF MADRONO HOLLOW.


The latch on the garden gate of the Folinsbee Ranch clicked twice.
The gate itself was so much in shadow that lovely night, that "old
man Folinsbee," sitting on his porch, could distinguish nothing but
a tall white hat and beside it a few fluttering ribbons, under the
pines that marked the entrance.  Whether because of this fact, or
that he considered a sufficient time had elapsed since the clicking
of the latch for more positive disclosure, I do not know; but after
a few moments' hesitation he quietly laid aside his pipe and walked
slowly down the winding path toward the gate.  At the Ceanothus
hedge he stopped and listened.

There was not much to hear.  The hat was saying to the ribbons that
it was a fine night, and remarking generally upon the clear outline
of the Sierras against the blue-black sky.  The ribbons, it so
appeared, had admired this all the way home, and asked the hat if
it had ever seen anything half so lovely as the moonlight on the
summit.  The hat never had; it recalled some lovely nights in the
South in Alabama ("in the South in Ahlabahm" was the way the old
man heard it), but then there were other things that made this
night seem so pleasant.  The ribbons could not possibly conceive
what the hat could be thinking about.  At this point there was a
pause, of which Mr. Folinsbee availed himself to walk very grimly
and craunchingly down the gravel-walk toward the gate.  Then the
hat was lifted, and disappeared in the shadow, and Mr. Folinsbee
confronted only the half-foolish, half-mischievous, but wholly
pretty face of his daughter.

It was afterward known to Madrono Hollow that sharp words passed
between "Miss Jo" and the old man, and that the latter coupled the
names of one Culpepper Starbottle and his uncle, Colonel Starbottle,
with certain uncomplimentary epithets, and that Miss Jo retaliated
sharply.  "Her father's blood before her father's face boiled up and
proved her truly of his race," quoted the blacksmith, who leaned
toward the noble verse of Byron.  "She saw the old man's bluff and
raised him," was the directer comment of the college-bred Masters.

Meanwhile the subject of these animadversions proceeded slowly
along the road to a point where the Folinsbee mansion came in
view,--a long, narrow, white building, unpretentious, yet superior
to its neighbors, and bearing some evidences of taste and
refinement in the vines that clambered over its porch, in its
French windows, and the white muslin curtains that kept out the
fierce California sun by day, and were now touched with silver in
the gracious moonlight.  Culpepper leaned against the low fence,
and gazed long and earnestly at the building.  Then the moonlight
vanished ghostlike from one of the windows, a material glow took
its place, and a girlish figure, holding a candle, drew the white
curtains together.  To Culpepper it was a vestal virgin standing
before a hallowed shrine; to the prosaic observer I fear it was
only a fair-haired young woman, whose wicked black eyes still shone
with unfilial warmth.  Howbeit, when the figure had disappeared he
stepped out briskly into the moonlight of the high-road.  Here he
took off his distinguishing hat to wipe his forehead, and the moon
shone full upon his face.

It was not an unprepossessing one, albeit a trifle too thin and
lank and bilious to be altogether pleasant.  The cheek-bones were
prominent, and the black eyes sunken in their orbits.  Straight
black hair fell slantwise off a high but narrow forehead, and swept
part of a hollow cheek.  A long black mustache followed the
perpendicular curves of his mouth.  It was on the whole a serious,
even Quixotic face, but at times it was relieved by a rare smile of
such tender and even pathetic sweetness, that Miss Jo is reported
to have said that, if it would only last through the ceremony, she
would have married its possessor on the spot.  "I once told him
so," added that shameless young woman; "but the man instantly fell
into a settled melancholy, and hasn't smiled since."

A half-mile below the Folinsbee Ranch the white road dipped and was
crossed by a trail that ran through Madrono hollow.  Perhaps
because it was a near cut-off to the settlement, perhaps from some
less practical reason, Culpepper took this trail, and in a few
moments stood among the rarely beautiful trees that gave their name
to the valley.  Even in that uncertain light the weird beauty of
these harlequin masqueraders was apparent; their red trunks--a
blush in the moonlight, a deep blood-stain in the shadow--stood out
against the silvery green foliage.  It was as if Nature in some
gracious moment had here caught and crystallized the gypsy memories
of the transplanted Spaniard, to cheer him in his lonely exile.

As Culpepper entered the grove he heard loud voices.  As he turned
toward a clump of trees, a figure so bizarre and characteristic
that it might have been a resident Daphne--a figure over-dressed in
crimson silk and lace, with bare brown arms and shoulders, and a
wreath of honeysuckle--stepped out of the shadow.  It was followed
by a man.  Culpepper started.  To come to the point briefly, he
recognized in the man the features of his respected uncle, Colonel
Starbottle; in the female, a lady who may be briefly described as
one possessing absolutely no claim to an introduction to the polite
reader.  To hurry over equally unpleasant details, both were
evidently under the influence of liquor.

From the excited conversation that ensued, Culpepper gathered that
some insult had been put upon the lady at a public ball which she
had attended that evening; that the Colonel, her escort, had failed
to resent it with the sanguinary completeness that she desired.  I
regret that, even in a liberal age, I may not record the exact and
even picturesque language in which this was conveyed to her
hearers.  Enough that at the close of a fiery peroration, with
feminine inconsistency she flew at the gallant Colonel, and would
have visited her delayed vengeance upon his luckless head, but for
the prompt interference of Culpepper.  Thwarted in this, she threw
herself upon the ground, and then into unpicturesque hysterics.
There was a fine moral lesson, not only in this grotesque performance
of a sex which cannot afford to be grotesque, but in the ludicrous
concern with which it inspired the two men.  Culpepper, to whom woman
was more or less angelic, was pained and sympathetic; the Colonel,
to whom she was more or less improper, was exceedingly terrified and
embarrassed.  Howbeit the storm was soon over, and after Mistress
Dolores had returned a little dagger to its sheath (her garter), she
quietly took herself out of Madrono Hollow, and happily out of these
pages forever.  The two men, left to themselves, conversed in low
tones.  Dawn stole upon them before they separated: the Colonel
quite sobered and in full possession of his usual jaunty
self-assertion; Culpepper with a baleful glow in his hollow cheek,
and in his dark eyes a rising fire.


The next morning the general ear of Madrono Hollow was filled with
rumors of the Colonel's mishap.  It was asserted that he had been
invited to withdraw his female companion from the floor of the
Assembly Ball at the Independence Hotel, and that, failing to do
this, both were expelled.  It is to be regretted that in 1854
public opinion was divided in regard to the propriety of this step,
and that there was some discussion as to the comparative virtue of
the ladies who were not expelled; but it was generally conceded
that the real casus belli was political.  "Is this a dashed Puritan
meeting?" had asked the Colonel, savagely.  "It's no Pike County
shindig," had responded the floor-manager, cheerfully.  "You're a
Yank!" had screamed the Colonel, profanely qualifying the noun.
"Get! you border ruffian," was the reply.  Such at least was the
substance of the reports.  As, at that sincere epoch, expressions
like the above were usually followed by prompt action, a fracas was
confidently looked for.

Nothing, however, occurred.  Colonel Starbottle made his appearance
next day upon the streets with somewhat of his usual pomposity, a
little restrained by the presence of his nephew, who accompanied
him, and who, as a universal favorite, also exercised some
restraint upon the curious and impertinent.  But Culpepper's face
wore a look of anxiety quite at variance with his usual grave
repose.  "The Don don't seem to take the old man's set-back
kindly," observed the sympathizing blacksmith.  "P'r'aps he was
sweet on Dolores himself," suggested the sceptical expressman.

It was a bright morning, a week after this occurrence, that Miss Jo
Folinsbee stepped from her garden into the road.  This time the
latch did not click as she cautiously closed the gate behind her.
After a moment's irresolution, which would have been awkward but
that it was charmingly employed, after the manner of her sex, in
adjusting a bow under a dimpled but rather prominent chin, and in
pulling down the fingers of a neatly fitting glove, she tripped
toward the settlement.  Small wonder that a passing teamster drove
his six mules into the wayside ditch and imperilled his load, to
keep the dust from her spotless garments; small wonder that the
"Lightning Express" withheld its speed and flash to let her pass,
and that the expressman, who had never been known to exchange more
than rapid monosyllables with his fellow-man, gazed after her with
breathless admiration.  For she was certainly attractive.  In a
country where the ornamental sex followed the example of youthful
Nature, and were prone to overdress and glaring efflorescence, Miss
Jo's simple and tasteful raiment added much to the physical charm
of, if it did not actually suggest a sentiment to, her presence.
It is said that Euchre-deck Billy, working in the gulch at the
crossing, never saw Miss Folinsbee pass but that he always remarked
apologetically to his partner, that "he believed he MUST write a
letter home."  Even Bill Masters, who saw her in Paris presented to
the favorable criticism of that most fastidious man, the late
Emperor, said that she was stunning, but a big discount on what she
was at Madrono Hollow.

It was still early morning, but the sun, with California
extravagance, had already begun to beat hotly on the little chip
hat and blue ribbons, and Miss Jo was obliged to seek the shade of
a bypath.  Here she received the timid advances of a vagabond
yellow dog graciously, until, emboldened by his success, he
insisted upon accompanying her, and, becoming slobberingly
demonstrative, threatened her spotless skirt with his dusty paws,
when she drove him from her with some slight acerbity, and a stone
which haply fell within fifty feet of its destined mark.  Having
thus proved her ability to defend herself, with characteristic
inconsistency she took a small panic, and, gathering her white
skirts in one hand, and holding the brim of her hat over her eyes
with the other, she ran swiftly at least a hundred yards before she
stopped.  Then she began picking some ferns and a few wild-flowers
still spared to the withered fields, and then a sudden distrust of
her small ankles seized her, and she inspected them narrowly for
those burrs and bugs and snakes which are supposed to lie in wait
for helpless womanhood.  Then she plucked some golden heads of wild
oats, and with a sudden inspiration placed them in her black hair,
and then came quite unconsciously upon the trail leading to Madrono
Hollow.

Here she hesitated.  Before her ran the little trail, vanishing at
last into the bosky depths below.  The sun was very hot.  She must
be very far from home.  Why should she not rest awhile under the
shade of a madrono?

She answered these questions by going there at once.  After
thoroughly exploring the grove, and satisfying herself that it
contained no other living human creature, she sat down under one of
the largest trees, with a satisfactory little sigh.  Miss Jo loved
the madrono.  It was a cleanly tree; no dust ever lay upon its
varnished leaves; its immaculate shade never was known to harbor
grub or insect.

She looked up at the rosy arms interlocked and arched above her
head.  She looked down at the delicate ferns and cryptogams at her
feet.  Something glittered at the root of the tree.  She picked it
up; it was a bracelet.  She examined it carefully for cipher or
inscription; there was none.  She could not resist a natural desire
to clasp it on her arm, and to survey it from that advantageous
view-point.  This absorbed her attention for some moments; and when
she looked up again she beheld at a little distance Culpepper
Starbottle.

He was standing where he had halted, with instinctive delicacy, on
first discovering her.  Indeed, he had even deliberated whether he
ought not to go away without disturbing her.  But some fascination
held him to the spot.  Wonderful power of humanity!  Far beyond
jutted an outlying spur of the Sierra, vast, compact, and silent.
Scarcely a hundred yards away, a league-long chasm dropped its
sheer walls of granite a thousand feet.  On every side rose up the
serried ranks of pine-trees, in whose close-set files centuries of
storm and change had wrought no breach.  Yet all this seemed to
Culpepper to have been planned by an all-wise Providence as the
natural background to the figure of a pretty girl in a yellow
dress.

Although Miss Jo had confidently expected to meet Culpepper
somewhere in her ramble, now that he came upon her suddenly, she
felt disappointed and embarrassed.  His manner, too, was more than
usually grave and serious; and more than ever seemed to jar upon
that audacious levity which was this giddy girl's power and
security in a society where all feeling was dangerous.  As he
approached her she rose to her feet, but almost before she knew it
he had taken her hand and drawn her to a seat beside him.  This was
not what Miss Jo had expected, but nothing is so difficult to
predicate as the exact preliminaries of a declaration of love.

What did Culpepper say?  Nothing, I fear, that will add anything to
the wisdom of the reader; nothing, I fear, that Miss Jo had not
heard substantially from other lips before.  But there was a
certain conviction, fire-speed, and fury in the manner that was
deliciously novel to the young lady.  It was certainly something to
be courted in the nineteenth century with all the passion and
extravagance of the sixteenth; it was something to hear, amid the
slang of a frontier society, the language of knight-errantry poured
into her ear by this lantern-jawed, dark-browed descendant of the
Cavaliers.

I do not know that there was anything more in it.  The facts,
however, go to show that at a certain point Miss Jo dropped her
glove, and that in recovering it Culpepper possessed himself first
of her hand and then her lips.  When they stood up to go Culpepper
had his arm around her waist, and her black hair, with its sheaf of
golden oats, rested against the breast pocket of his coat.  But
even then I do not think her fancy was entirely captive.  She took
a certain satisfaction in this demonstration of Culpepper's
splendid height, and mentally compared it with a former flame, one
lieutenant McMirk, an active, but under-sized Hector, who
subsequently fell a victim to the incautiously composed and
monotonous beverages of a frontier garrison.  Nor was she so much
preoccupied but that her quick eyes, even while absorbing
Culpepper's glances, were yet able to detect, at a distance, the
figure of a man approaching.  In an instant she slipped out of
Culpepper's arm, and, whipping her hands behind her, said, "There's
that horrid man!"

Culpepper looked up and beheld his respected uncle panting and
blowing over the hill.  His brow contracted as he turned to Miss
Jo: "You don't like my uncle!"

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

Culpepper blushed.  He would have liked to enter upon some details
of the Colonel's pedigree and exploits, but there was not time.  He
only smiled sadly.  The smile melted Miss Jo.  She held out her
hand quickly, and said with even more than her usual effrontery,
"Don't let that man get you into any trouble.  Take care of
yourself, dear, and don't let anything happen to you."

Miss Jo intended this speech to be pathetic; the tenure of life
among her lovers had hitherto been very uncertain.  Culpepper
turned toward her, but she had already vanished in the thicket.

The Colonel came up panting.  "I've looked all over town for you,
and be dashed to you, sir.  Who was that with you?"

"A lady."  (Culpepper never lied, but he was discreet.)

"D--m 'em all!  Look yar, Culp, I've spotted the man who gave the
order to put me off the floor" ("flo" was what the Colonel said)
"the other night!"

"Who was it?" asked Culpepper, listlessly.

"Jack Folinsbee."

"Who?"

"Why, the son of that dashed nigger-worshipping psalm-singing
Puritan Yankee.  What's the matter, now?  Look yar, Culp, you ain't
goin' back on your blood, ar' ye?  You ain't goin' back on your
word?  Ye ain't going down at the feet of this trash, like a
whipped hound?"

Culpepper was silent.  He was very white.  Presently he looked up
and said quietly.  "No."


Culpepper Starbottle had challenged Jack Folinsbee, and the
challenge was accepted.  The cause alleged was the expelling of
Culpepper's uncle from the floor of the Assembly Ball by the order
of Folinsbee.  This much Madrono Hollow knew and could swear to;
but there were other strange rumors afloat, of which the blacksmith
was an able expounder.  "You see, gentlemen," he said to the crowd
gathered around his anvil, "I ain't got no theory of this affair, I
only give a few facts as have come to my knowledge.  Culpepper and
Jack meets quite accidental like in Bob's saloon.  Jack goes up to
Culpepper and says, 'A word with you.'  Culpepper bows and steps
aside in this way, Jack standing about HERE."  (The blacksmith
demonstrates the position of the parties with two old horseshoes on
the anvil.)  "Jack pulls a bracelet from his pocket and says, 'Do
you know that bracelet?'  Culpepper says, 'I do not,' quite cool-
like and easy.  Jack says, 'You gave it to my sister.'  Culpepper
says, still cool as you please, 'I did not.'  Jack says, 'You lie,
G-d d-mn you,' and draws his derringer.  Culpepper jumps forward
about here" (reference is made to the diagram) "and Jack fires.
Nobody hit.  It's a mighty cur'o's thing, gentlemen," continued the
blacksmith, dropping suddenly into the abstract, and leaning
meditatively on his anvil,--"it's a mighty cur'o's thing that
nobody gets hit so often.  You and me empties our revolvers
sociably at each other over a little game, and the room full and
nobody gets hit!  That's what gets me."

"Never mind, Thompson," chimed in Bill Masters, "there's another
and a better world where we shall know all that and--become better
shots.  Go on with your story."

"Well, some grabs Culpepper and some grabs Jack, and so separates
them.  Then Jack tells 'em as how he had seen his sister wear a
bracelet which he knew was one that had been given to Dolores by
Colonel Starbottle.  That Miss Jo wouldn't say where she got it,
but owned up to having seen Culpepper that day.  Then the most
cur'o's thing of it yet, what does Culpepper do but rise up and
takes all back that he said, and allows that he DID give her the
bracelet.  Now my opinion, gentlemen, is that he lied; it ain't
like that man to give a gal that he respects anything off of that
piece, Dolores.  But it's all the same now, and there's but one
thing to be done."

The way this one thing was done belongs to the record of Madrono
Hollow.  The morning was bright and clear; the air was slightly
chill, but that was from the mist which arose along the banks of
the river.  As early as six o'clock the designated ground--a little
opening in the madrono grove--was occupied by Culpepper Starbottle,
Colonel Starbottle, his second, and the surgeon.  The Colonel was
exalted and excited, albeit in a rather imposing, dignified way,
and pointed out to the surgeon the excellence of the ground, which
at that hour was wholly shaded from the sun, whose steady stare is
more or less discomposing to your duellist.  The surgeon threw
himself on the grass and smoked his cigar.  Culpepper, quiet and
thoughtful, leaned against a tree and gazed up the river.  There
was a strange suggestion of a picnic about the group, which was
heightened when the Colonel drew a bottle from his coat-tails, and,
taking a preliminary draught, offered it to the others.  "Cocktails,
sir," he explained with dignified precision.  "A gentleman, sir,
should never go out without 'em.  Keeps off the morning chill.  I
remember going out in '53 with Hank Boompirater.  Good ged, sir, the
man had to put on his overcoat, and was shot in it.  Fact."

But the noise of wheels drowned the Colonel's reminiscences, and a
rapidly driven buggy, containing Jack Folinsbee, Calhoun
Bungstarter, his second, and Bill Masters, drew up on the ground.
Jack Folinsbee leaped out gayly.  "I had the jolliest work to get
away without the governor's hearing," he began, addressing the
group before him with the greatest volubility.  Calhoun Bungstarter
touched his arm, and the young man blushed.  It was his first duel.

"If you are ready, gentlemen," said Mr. Bungstarter, "we had better
proceed to business.  I believe it is understood that no apology
will be offered or accepted.  We may as well settle preliminaries
at once, or I fear we shall be interrupted.  There is a rumor in
town that the Vigilance Committee are seeking our friends the
Starbottles, and I believe, as their fellow-countryman, I have the
honor to be included in their warrant."

At this probability of interruption, that gravity which had
hitherto been wanting fell upon the group.  The preliminaries were
soon arranged and the principals placed in position.  Then there
was a silence.

To a spectator from the hill, impressed with the picnic suggestion,
what might have been the popping of two champagne corks broke the
stillness.

Culpepper had fired in the air.  Colonel Starbottle uttered a low
curse.  Jack Folinsbee sulkily demanded another shot.

Again the parties stood opposed to each other.  Again the word was
given, and what seemed to be the simultaneous report of both
pistols rose upon the air.  But after an interval of a few seconds
all were surprised to see Culpepper slowly raise his unexploded
weapon and fire it harmlessly above his head.  Then, throwing the
pistol upon the ground, he walked to a tree and leaned silently
against it.

Jack Folinsbee flew into a paroxysm of fury.  Colonel Starbottle
raved and swore.  Mr. Bungstarter was properly shocked at their
conduct.  "Really, gentlemen, if Mr. Culpepper Starbottle declines
another shot, I do not see how we can proceed."

But the Colonel's blood was up, and Jack Folinsbee was equally
implacable.  A hurried consultation ensued, which ended by Colonel
Starbottle taking his nephew's place as principal, Bill Masters
acting as second, vice Mr. Bungstarter, who declined all further
connection with the affair.

Two distinct reports rang through the Hollow.  Jack Folinsbee
dropped his smoking pistol, took a step forward, and then dropped
heavily upon his face.

In a moment the surgeon was at his side.  The confusion was
heightened by the trampling of hoofs, and the voice of the
blacksmith bidding them flee for their lives before the coming
storm.  A moment more and the ground was cleared, and the surgeon,
looking up, beheld only the white face of Culpepper bending over
him.

"Can you save him?"

"I cannot say.  Hold up his head a moment, while I run to the
buggy."

Culpepper passed his arm tenderly around the neck of the insensible
man.  Presently the surgeon returned with some stimulants.

"There, that will do, Mr. Starbottle, thank you.  Now my advice is
to get away from here while you can.  I'll look after Folinsbee.
Do you hear?"

Culpepper's arm was still round the neck of his late foe, but his
head had drooped and fallen on the wounded man's shoulder.  The
surgeon looked down, and, catching sight of his face, stooped and
lifted him gently in his arms.  He opened his coat and waistcoat.
There was blood upon his shirt, and a bullet-hole in his breast.
He had been shot unto death at the first fire.



THE POET OF SIERRA FLAT.


As the enterprising editor of the "Sierra Flat Record" stood at his
case setting type for his next week's paper, he could not help
hearing the woodpeckers who were busy on the roof above his head.
It occurred to him that possibly the birds had not yet learned to
recognize in the rude structure any improvement on nature, and this
idea pleased him so much that he incorporated it in the editorial
article which he was then doubly composing.  For the editor was
also printer of the "Record"; and although that remarkable journal
was reputed to exert a power felt through all Calaveras and a
greater part of Tuolumne County, strict economy was one of the
conditions of its beneficent existence.

Thus preoccupied, he was startled by the sudden irruption of a
small roll of manuscript, which was thrown through the open door
and fell at his feet.  He walked quickly to the threshold and
looked down the tangled trail which led to the high-road.  But
there was nothing to suggest the presence of his mysterious
contributor.  A hare limped slowly away, a green-and-gold lizard
paused upon a pine stump, the woodpeckers ceased their work.  So
complete had been his sylvan seclusion, that he found it difficult
to connect any human agency with the act; rather the hare seemed to
have an inexpressibly guilty look, the woodpeckers to maintain a
significant silence, and the lizard to be conscience-stricken into
stone.

An examination of the manuscript, however, corrected this injustice
to defenceless nature.  It was evidently of human origin,--being
verse, and of exceeding bad quality.  The editor laid it aside.  As
he did so he thought he saw a face at the window.  Sallying out in
some indignation, he penetrated the surrounding thicket in every
direction, but his search was as fruitless as before.  The poet, if
it were he, was gone.

A few days after this the editorial seclusion was invaded by voices
of alternate expostulation and entreaty.  Stepping to the door, the
editor was amazed at beholding Mr. Morgan McCorkle, a well-known
citizen of Angelo, and a subscriber to the "Record," in the act of
urging, partly by force and partly by argument, an awkward young
man toward the building.  When he had finally effected his object,
and, as it were, safely landed his prize in a chair, Mr. McCorkle
took off his hat, carefully wiped the narrow isthmus of forehead
which divided his black brows from his stubby hair, and with an
explanatory wave of his hand toward his reluctant companion, said,
"A borned poet, and the cussedest fool you ever seed!"

Accepting the editor's smile as a recognition of the introduction,
Mr. McCorkle panted and went on: "Didn't want to come!  'Mister
Editor don't went to see me, Morg,' sez he.  'Milt,' sez I, 'he do;
a borned poet like you and a gifted genius like he oughter come
together sociable!'  And I fetched him.  Ah, will yer?"  The born
poet had, after exhibiting signs of great distress, started to run.
But Mr. McCorkle was down upon him instantly, seizing him by his
long linen coat, and settled him back in his chair.  "Tain't no use
stampeding.  Yer ye are and yer ye stays.  For yer a borned poet,--
ef ye are as shy as a jackass rabbit.  Look at 'im now!"

He certainly was not an attractive picture.  There was hardly a
notable feature in his weak face, except his eyes, which were moist
and shy and not unlike the animal to which Mr. McCorkle had
compared him.  It was the face that the editor had seen at the
window.

"Knowed him for fower year,--since he war a boy," continued Mr.
McCorkle in a loud whisper.  "Allers the same, bless you!  Can jerk
a rhyme as easy as turnin' jack.  Never had any eddication; lived
out in Missooray all his life.  But he's chock full o' poetry.
On'y this mornin' sez I to him,--he camps along o' me,--'Milt!' sez
I, 'are breakfast ready?' and he up and answers back quite peert
and chipper, 'The breakfast it is ready, and the birds is singing
free, and it's risin' in the dawnin' light is happiness to me!'
When a man," said Mr. McCorkle, dropping his voice with deep
solemnity, "gets off things like them, without any call to do it,
and handlin' flapjacks over a cookstove at the same time,--that
man's a borned poet."

There was an awkward pause.  Mr. McCorkle beamed patronizingly on
his protege.  The born poet looked as if he were meditating another
flight,--not a metaphorical one.  The editor asked if he could do
anything for them.

"In course you can," responded Mr. McCorkle, "that's jest it.
Milt, where's that poetry!"

The editor's countenance fell as the poet produced from his pocket
a roll of manuscript.  He, however, took it mechanically and
glanced over it.  It was evidently a duplicate of the former
mysterious contribution.

The editor then spoke briefly but earnestly.  I regret that I cannot
recall his exact words, but it appeared that never before, in the
history of the "Record," had the pressure been so great upon its
columns.  Matters of paramount importance, deeply affecting the
material progress of Sierra, questions touching the absolute
integrity of Calaveras and Tuolumne as social communities, were even
now waiting expression.  Weeks, nay, months, must elapse before that
pressure would be removed, and the "Record" could grapple with any
but the sternest of topics.  Again, the editor had noticed with pain
the absolute decline of poetry in the foot-hills of the Sierras.
Even the works of Byron and Moore attracted no attention in Dutch
Flat, and a prejudice seemed to exist against Tennyson in Grass
Valley.  But the editor was not without hope for the future.  In the
course of four or five years, when the country was settled,--

"What would be the cost to print this yer?" interrupted Mr.
McCorkle, quietly.

"About fifty dollars, as an advertisement," responded the editor
with cheerful alacrity.

Mr. McCorkle placed the sum in the editor's hand.  "Yer see thet's
what I sez to Milt, 'Milt,' sez I, 'pay as you go, for you are a
borned poet.  Hevin no call to write, but doin' it free and
spontaneous like, in course you pays.  Thet's why Mr. Editor never
printed your poetry.'"

"What name shall I put to it?" asked the editor.

"Milton."

It was the first word that the born poet had spoken during the
interview, and his voice was so very sweet and musical that the
editor looked at him curiously, and wondered if he had a sister.

"Milton; is that all?"

"Thet's his furst name," exclaimed Mr. McCorkle.

The editor here suggested that as there had been another poet of
that name--

"Milt might be took for him!  Thet's bad," reflected Mr. McCorkle
with simple gravity.  "Well, put down his hull name,--Milton
Chubbuck."

The editor made a note of the fact.  "I'll set it up now," he said.
This was also a hint that the interview was ended.  The poet and
patron, arm in arm, drew towards the door.  "In next week's paper,"
said the editor, smilingly, in answer to the childlike look of
inquiry in the eyes of the poet, and in another moment they were
gone.

The editor was as good as his word.  He straight-way betook himself
to his case, and, unrolling the manuscript, began his task.  The
woodpeckers on the roof recommenced theirs, and in a few moments
the former sylvan seclusion was restored.  There was no sound in
the barren, barn-like room but the birds above, and below the click
of the composing-rule as the editor marshalled the types into lines
in his stick, and arrayed them in solid column on the galley.
Whatever might have been his opinion of the copy before him, there
was no indication of it in his face, which wore the stolid
indifference of his craft.  Perhaps this was unfortunate, for as
the day wore on and the level rays of the sun began to pierce the
adjacent thicket, they sought out and discovered an anxious
ambushed figure drawn up beside the editor's window,--a figure that
had sat there motionless for hours.  Within, the editor worked on
as steadily and impassively as Fate.  And without, the born poet of
Sierra Flat sat and watched him as waiting its decree.


The effect of the poem on Sierra Flat was remarkable and
unprecedented.  The absolute vileness of its doggerel, the
gratuitous imbecility of its thought, and above all the crowning
audacity of the fact that it was the work of a citizen and published
in the county paper, brought it instantly into popularity.  For many
months Calaveras had languished for a sensation; since the last
vigilance committee nothing had transpired to dispel the listless
ennui begotten of stagnant business and growing civilization.  In
more prosperous moments the office of the "Record" would have been
simply gutted and the editor deported; at present the paper was in
such demand that the edition was speedily exhausted.  In brief, the
poem of Mr. Milton Chubbuck came like a special providence to Sierra
Flat.  It was read by camp-fires, in lonely cabins, in flaring
bar-rooms and noisy saloons, and declaimed from the boxes of
stagecoaches.  It was sung in Poker Flat with the addition of a
local chorus, and danced as an unhallowed rhythmic dance by the
Pyrrhic phalanx of One Horse Gulch, known as "The Festive Stags of
Calaveras."  Some unhappy ambiguities of expression gave rise to
many new readings, notes, and commentaries, which, I regret to
state, were more often marked by ingenuity than delicacy of thought
or expression.

Never before did poet acquire such sudden local reputation.  From
the seclusion of McCorkle's cabin and the obscurity of culinary
labors, he was haled forth into the glowing sunshine of Fame.  The
name of Chubbuck was written in letters of chalk on unpainted
walls, and carved with a pick on the sides of tunnels.  A drink
known variously as "The Chubbuck Tranquillizer," or "The Chubbuck
Exalter," was dispensed at the bars.  For some weeks a rude design
for a Chubbuck statue, made up of illustrations from circus and
melodeon posters, representing the genius of Calaveras in brief
skirts on a flying steed in the act of crowning the poet Chubbuck,
was visible at Keeler's Ferry.  The poet himself was overborne with
invitations to drink and extravagant congratulations.  The meeting
between Colonel Starbottle of Siskyion and Chubbuck, as previously
arranged by our "Boston," late of Roaring Camp, is said to have
been indescribably affecting.  The Colonel embraced him unsteadily.
"I could not return to my constituents at Siskyion, sir, if this
hand, which has grasped that of the gifted Prentice and the
lamented Poe, should not have been honored by the touch of the
godlike Chubbuck.  Gentlemen, American literature is looking up.
Thank you, I will take sugar in mine."  It was "Boston" who indited
letters of congratulations from H. W. Longfellow, Tennyson, and
Browning, to Mr. Chubbuck, deposited them in the Sierra Flat post-
office, and obligingly consented to dictate the replies.

The simple faith and unaffected delight with which these
manifestations were received by the poet and his patron might have
touched the hearts of these grim masters of irony, but for the
sudden and equal development in both of the variety of weak
natures.  Mr. McCorkle basked in the popularity of his protege, and
became alternately supercilious or patronizing toward the dwellers
of Sierra Flat; while the poet, with hair carefully oiled and
curled, and bedecked with cheap jewelry and flaunting neck-
handkerchief, paraded himself before the single hotel.  As may be
imagined, this new disclosure of weakness afforded intense
satisfaction to Sierra Flat, gave another lease of popularity to
the poet, and suggested another idea to the facetious "Boston."

At that time a young lady popularly and professionally known as the
"California Pet" was performing to enthusiastic audiences in the
interior.  Her specialty lay in the personation of youthful
masculine character; as a gamin of the street she was irresistible,
as a negro-dancer she carried the honest miner's heart by storm.  A
saucy, pretty brunette, she had preserved a wonderful moral
reputation even under the Jove-like advances of showers of gold
that greeted her appearance on the stage at Sierra Flat.  A
prominent and delighted member of that audience was Milton
Chubbuck.  He attended every night.  Every day he lingered at the
door of the Union Hotel for a glimpse of the "California Pet."  It
was not long before he received a note from her,--in "Boston's"
most popular and approved female hand,--acknowledging his
admiration.  It was not long before "Boston" was called upon to
indite a suitable reply.  At last, in furtherance of his facetious
design, it became necessary for "Boston" to call upon the young
actress herself and secure her personal participation.  To her he
unfolded a plan, the successful carrying out of which he felt would
secure his fame to posterity as a practical humorist.  The
"California Pet's" black eyes sparkled approvingly and mischievously.
She only stipulated that she should see the man first,--a concession
to her feminine weakness which years of dancing Juba and wearing
trousers and boots had not wholly eradicated from her wilful breast.
By all means, it should be done.  And the interview was arranged for
the next week.

It must not be supposed that during this interval of popularity Mr.
Chubbuck had been unmindful of his poetic qualities.  A certain
portion of each day he was absent from town,--"a communin' with
natur'," as Mr. McCorkle expressed it,--and actually wandering in
the mountain trails, or lying on his back under the trees, or
gathering fragrant herbs and the bright-colored berries of the
Marzanita.  These and his company he generally brought to the
editor's office, late in the afternoon, often to that enterprising
journalist's infinite weariness.  Quiet and uncommunicative, he
would sit there patiently watching him at his work until the hour
for closing the office arrived, when he would as quietly depart.
There was something so humble and unobtrusive in these visits, that
the editor could not find it in his heart to deny them, and
accepting them, like the woodpeckers, as a part of his sylvan
surroundings, often forgot even his presence.  Once or twice, moved
by some beauty of expression in the moist, shy eyes, he felt like
seriously admonishing his visitor of his idle folly; but his glance
falling upon the oiled hair and the gorgeous necktie, he invariably
thought better of it.  The case was evidently hopeless.

The interview between Mr. Chubbuck and the "California Pet" took
place in a private room of the Union Hotel; propriety being
respected by the presence of that arch-humorist, "Boston."  To this
gentleman we are indebted for the only true account of the meeting.
However reticent Mr. Chubbuck might have been in the presence of
his own sex, toward the fairer portion of humanity he was, like
most poets, exceedingly voluble.  Accustomed as the "California
Pet" had been to excessive compliment, she was fairly embarrassed
by the extravagant praises of her visitor.  Her personation of boy
characters, her dancing of the "champion jig," were particularly
dwelt upon with fervid but unmistakable admiration.  At last,
recovering her audacity and emboldened by the presence of "Boston,"
the "California Pet" electrified her hearers by demanding, half
jestingly, half viciously, if it were as a boy or a girl that she
was the subject of his flattering admiration.

"That knocked him out o' time," said the delighted "Boston," in his
subsequent account of the interview.  "But do you believe the d----d
fool actually asked her to take him with her; wanted to engage in
the company."

The plan, as briefly unfolded by "Boston," was to prevail upon Mr.
Chubbuck to make his appearance in costume (already designed and
prepared by the inventor) before a Sierra Flat audience, and recite
an original poem at the Hall immediately on the conclusion of the
"California Pet's" performance.  At a given signal the audience
were to rise and deliver a volley of unsavory articles (previously
provided by the originator of the scheme); then a select few were
to rush on the stage, seize the poet, and, after marching him in
triumphal procession through town, were to deposit him beyond its
uttermost limits, with strict injunctions never to enter it again.
To the first part of the plan the poet was committed, for the
latter portion it was easy enough to find participants.

The eventful night came, and with it an audience that packed the
long narrow room with one dense mass of human beings.  The
"California Pet" never had been so joyous, so reckless, so
fascinating and audacious before.  But the applause was tame and
weak compared to the ironical outburst that greeted the second
rising of the curtain and the entrance of the born poet of Sierra
Flat.  Then there was a hush of expectancy, and the poet stepped to
the foot-lights and stood with his manuscript in his hand.

His face was deadly pale.  Either there was some suggestion of his
fate in the faces of his audience, or some mysterious instinct told
him of his danger.  He attempted to speak, but faltered, tottered,
and staggered to the wings.

Fearful of losing his prey, "Boston" gave the signal and leaped
upon the stage.  But at the same moment a light figure darted from
behind the scenes, and delivering a kick that sent the discomfited
humorist back among the musicians, cut a pigeon-wing, executed a
double-shuffle, and then advancing to the foot-lights with that
inimitable look, that audacious swagger and utter abandon which had
so thrilled and fascinated them a moment before, uttered the
characteristic speech: "Wot are you goin' to hit a man fur, when
he's down, s-a-a-y?"

The look, the drawl, the action, the readiness, and above all the
downright courage of the little woman, had its effect.  A roar of
sympathetic applause followed the act.  "Cut and run while you
can," she whispered hurriedly over her one shoulder, without
altering the other's attitude of pert and saucy defiance toward the
audience.  But even as she spoke the poet tottered and sank
fainting upon the stage.  Then she threw a despairing whisper
behind the scenes, "Ring down the curtain."

There was a slight movement of opposition in the audience, but
among them rose the burly shoulders of Yuba Bill, the tall, erect
figure of Henry York of Sandy Bar, and the colorless, determined
face of John Oakhurst.  The curtain came down.

Behind it knelt the "California Pet" beside the prostrate poet.
"Bring me some water.  Run for a doctor.  Stop!!  CLEAR OUT, ALL OF
YOU!"

She had unloosed the gaudy cravat and opened the shirt-collar of
the insensible figure before her.  Then she burst into an
hysterical laugh.

"Manuela!"

Her tiring-woman, a Mexican half-breed, came toward her.

"Help me with him to my dressing-room, quick; then stand outside
and wait.  If any one questions you, tell them he's gone.  Do you
hear?  HE's gone."

The old woman did as she was bade.  In a few moments the audience
had departed.  Before morning so also had the "California Pet,"
Manuela, and--the poet of Sierra Flat.

But, alas! with them also had departed the fair fame of the
"California Pet."  Only a few, and these it is to be feared of not
the best moral character themselves, still had faith in the
stainless honor of their favorite actress.  "It was a mighty
foolish thing to do, but it'll all come out right yet."  On the
other hand, a majority gave her full credit and approbation for her
undoubted pluck and gallantry, but deplored that she should have
thrown it away upon a worthless object.  To elect for a lover the
despised and ridiculed vagrant of Sierra Flat, who had not even the
manliness to stand up in his own defence, was not only evidence of
inherent moral depravity, but was an insult to the community.
Colonel Starbottle saw in it only another instance of the extreme
frailty of the sex; he had known similar cases; and remembered
distinctly, sir, how a well-known Philadelphia heiress, one of the
finest women that ever rode in her kerridge, that, gad, sir! had
thrown over a Southern member of Congress to consort with a d----d
nigger.  The Colonel had also noticed a singular look in the dog's
eye which he did not entirely fancy.  He would not say anything
against the lady, sir, but he had noticed--  And here haply the
Colonel became so mysterious and darkly confidential as to be
unintelligible and inaudible to the bystanders.

A few days after the disappearance of Mr. Chubbuck a singular
report reached Sierra Flat, and it was noticed that "Boston," who
since the failure of his elaborate joke had been even more
depressed in spirits than is habitual with great humorists,
suddenly found that his presence was required in San Francisco.
But as yet nothing but the vaguest surmises were afloat, and
nothing definite was known.

It was a pleasant afternoon when the editor of the "Sierra Flat
Record" looked up from his case and beheld the figure of Mr. Morgan
McCorkle standing in the doorway.  There was a distressed look on
the face of that worthy gentleman that at once enlisted the
editor's sympathizing attention.  He held an open letter in his
hand, as he advanced toward the middle of the room.

"As a man as has allers borne a fair reputation," began Mr.
McCorkle slowly, "I should like, if so be as I could, Mister
Editor, to make a correction in the columns of your valooable
paper."

Mr. Editor begged him to proceed.

"Ye may not disremember that about a month ago I fetched here what
so be as we'll call a young man whose name might be as it were
Milton--Milton Chubbuck."

Mr. Editor remembered perfectly.

"Thet same party I'd knowed better nor fower year, two on 'em
campin' out together.  Not that I'd known him all the time, fur he
war shy and strange at spells and had odd ways that I took war
nat'ral to a borned poet.  Ye may remember that I said he was a
borned poet?"

The editor distinctly did.

"I picked this same party up in St. Jo., takin' a fancy to his
face, and kinder calklating he'd runn'd away from home,--for I'm a
married man, Mr. Editor, and hev children of my own,--and thinkin'
belike he was a borned poet."

"Well?" said the editor.

"And as I said before, I should like now to make a correction in
the columns of your valooable paper."

"What correction!" asked the editor.

"I said, ef you remember my words, as how he was a borned poet."

"Yes."

"From statements in this yer letter it seems as how I war wrong."

"Well!"

"She war a woman."



THE CHRISTMAS GIFT THAT CAME TO RUPERT.


A STORY FOR LITTLE SOLDIERS.


It was the Christmas season in California,--a season of falling
rain and springing grasses.  There were intervals when, through
driving clouds and flying scud, the sun visited the haggard hills
with a miracle, and death and resurrection were as one, and out of
the very throes of decay a joyous life struggled outward and
upward.  Even the storms that swept down the dead leaves nurtured
the tender buds that took their places.  There were no episodes of
snowy silence; over the quickening fields the farmer's ploughshare
hard followed the furrows left by the latest rains.  Perhaps it was
for this reason that the Christmas evergreens which decorated the
drawing-room took upon themselves a foreign aspect, and offered a
weird contrast to the roses, seen dimly through the windows, as the
southwest wind beat their soft faces against the panes.


"Now," said the Doctor, drawing his chair closer to the fire, and
looking mildly but firmly at the semicircle of flaxen heads around
him, "I want it distinctly understood before I begin my story, that
I am not to be interrupted by any ridiculous questions.  At the
first one I shall stop.  At the second, I shall feel it my duty to
administer a dose of castor-oil, all around.  The boy that moves
his legs or arms will be understood to invite amputation.  I have
brought my instruments with me, and never allow pleasure to
interfere with my business.  Do you promise?"

"Yes, sir," said six small voices, simultaneously.  The volley was,
however, followed by half a dozen dropping questions.

"Silence!  Bob, put your feet down, and stop rattling that sword.
Flora shall sit by my side, like a little lady, and be an example
to the rest.  Fung Tang shall stay, too, if he likes.  Now, turn
down the gas a little; there, that will do,--just enough to make
the fire look brighter, and to show off the Christmas candles.
Silence, everybody!  The boy who cracks an almond, or breathes too
loud over his raisins, will be put out of the room?"

There was a profound silence.  Bob laid his sword tenderly aside,
and nursed his leg thoughtfully.  Flora, after coquettishly
adjusting the pocket of her little apron, put her arm upon the
Doctor's shoulder, and permitted herself to be drawn beside him.
Fung Tang, the little heathen page, who was permitted, on this rare
occasion, to share the Christian revels in the drawing-room,
surveyed the group with a smile that was at once sweet and
philosophical.  The light ticking of a French clock on the mantel,
supported by a young shepherdess of bronze complexion and great
symmetry of limb, was the only sound that disturbed the Christmas-
like peace of the apartment,--a peace which held the odors of
evergreens, new toys, cedar-boxes, glue, and varnish in an
harmonious combination that passed all understanding.

"About four years ago at this time," began the Doctor, "I attended
a course of lectures in a certain city.  One of the professors, who
was a sociable, kindly man,--though somewhat practical and hard-
headed,--invited me to his house on Christmas night.  I was very
glad to go, as I was anxious to see one of his sons, who, though
only twelve years old, was said to be very clever.  I dare not tell
you how many Latin verses this little fellow could recite, or how
many English ones he had composed.  In the first place, you'd want
me to repeat them; secondly, I'm not a judge of poetry, Latin or
English.  But there were judges who said they were wonderful for a
boy, and everybody predicted a splendid future for him.  Everybody
but his father.  He shook his head doubtingly, whenever it was
mentioned, for, as I have told you, he was a practical, matter-of-
fact man.

"There was a pleasant party at the Professor's that night.  All the
children of the neighborhood were there, and among them the
Professor's clever son, Rupert, as they called him,--a thin little
chap, about as tall as Bobby there, and as fair and delicate as
Flora by my side.  His health was feeble, his father said; he
seldom ran about and played with other boys, preferring to stay at
home and brood over his books, and compose what he called his
verses.

"Well, we had a Christmas-tree just like this, and we had been
laughing and talking, calling off the names of the children who had
presents on the tree, and everybody was very happy and joyous, when
one of the children suddenly uttered a cry of mingled surprise and
hilarity, and said, 'Here's something for Rupert; and what do you
think it is?'

"We all guessed.  'A desk'; 'A copy of Milton'; 'A gold pen'; 'A
rhyming dictionary?  'No? what then?'

"'A drum!'

"'A what?' asked everybody.

"'A drum! with Rupert's name on it?'

"Sure enough there it was.  A good-sized, bright, new, brass-bound
drum, with a slip of paper on it, with the inscription, 'FOR
RUPERT.'

"Of course we all laughed, and thought it a good joke.  'You see
you're to make a noise in the world, Rupert!' said one.  'Here's
parchment for the poet,' said another.  'Rupert's last work in
sheepskin covers,' said a third.  'Give us a classical tune,
Rupert,' said a fourth; and so on.  But Rupert seemed too mortified
to speak; he changed color, bit his lips, and finally burst into a
passionate fit of crying, and left the room.  Then those who had
joked him felt ashamed, and everybody began to ask who had put the
drum there.  But no one knew, or if they did, the unexpected
sympathy awakened for the sensitive boy kept them silent.  Even the
servants were called up and questioned, but no one could give any
idea where it came from.  And, what was still more singular,
everybody declared that up to the moment it was produced, no one
had seen it hanging on the tree.  What do I think?  Well, I have my
own opinion.  But no questions!  Enough for you to know that Rupert
did not come down stairs again that night, and the party soon after
broke up.

"I had almost forgotten those things, for the war of the Rebellion
broke out the next spring, and I was appointed surgeon in one of
the new regiments, and was on my way to the seat of war.  But I had
to pass through the city where the Professor lived, and there I met
him.  My first question was about Rupert.  The Professor shook his
head sadly.  'He's not so well,' he said; 'he has been declining
since last Christmas, when you saw him.  A very strange case,' he
added, giving it a long Latin name,--'a very singular case.  But go
and see him yourself,' he urged; 'it may distract his mind and do
him good?'

"I went accordingly to the Professor's house, and found Rupert
lying on a sofa, propped up with pillows.  Around him were
scattered his books, and, what seemed in singular contrast, that
drum I told you about was hanging on a nail, just above his head.
His face was thin and wasted; there was a red spot on either cheek,
and his eyes were very bright and widely opened.  He was glad to
see me, and when I told him where I was going, he asked a thousand
questions about the war.  I thought I had thoroughly diverted his
mind from its sick and languid fancies, when he suddenly grasped my
hand and drew me toward him.

"'Doctor,' said he, in a low whisper, 'you won't laugh at me if I
tell you something?'

"'No, certainly not,' I said.

"'You remember that drum?' he said, pointing to the glittering toy
that hung against the wall.  'You know, too, how it came to me.  A
few weeks after Christmas, I was lying half asleep here, and the
drum was hanging on the wall, when suddenly I heard it beaten; at
first, low and slowly, then faster and louder, until its rolling
filled the house.  In the middle of the night, I heard it again.  I
did not dare to tell anybody about it, but I have heard it every
night ever since.'

"He paused and looked anxiously in my face.  'Sometimes,' he
continued, 'it is played softly, sometimes loudly, but always
quickening to a long-roll, so loud and alarming that I have looked
to see people coming into my room to ask what was the matter.  But
I think, Doctor,--I think,' he repeated slowly, looking up with
painful interest into my face, 'that no one hears it but myself.'

"I thought so, too, but I asked him if he had heard it at any other
time.

"'Once or twice in the daytime,' he replied, 'when I have been
reading or writing; then very loudly, as though it were angry, and
tried in that way to attract my attention away from my books.'

"I looked into his face, and placed my hand upon his pulse.  His
eyes were very bright, and his pulse a little flurried and quick.
I then tried to explain to him that he was very weak, and that his
senses were very acute, as most weak people's are; and how that
when he read, or grew interested and excited, or when he was tired
at night, the throbbing of a big artery made the beating sound he
heard.  He listened to me with a sad smile of unbelief, but thanked
me, and in a little while I went away.  But as I was going down
stairs, I met the Professor.  I gave him my opinion of the case,--
well, no matter what it was.

"'He wants fresh air and exercise,' said the Professor, 'and some
practical experience of life, sir?'  The Professor was not a bad
man, but he was a little worried and impatient, and thought--as
clever people are apt to think--that things which he didn't
understand were either silly or improper.

"I left the city that very day, and in the excitement of battle-
fields and hospitals, I forgot all about little Rupert, nor did I
hear of him again, until one day, meeting an old classmate in the
army, who had known the Professor, he told me that Rupert had
become quite insane, and that in one of his paroxysms he had
escaped from the house, and as he had never been found, it was
feared that he had fallen in the river and was drowned.  I was
terribly shocked for the moment, as you may imagine; but, dear me,
I was living just then among scenes as terrible and shocking, and I
had little time to spare to mourn over poor Rupert.

"It was not long after receiving this intelligence that we had a
terrible battle, in which a portion of our army was surprised and
driven back with great slaughter.  I was detached from my brigade
to ride over to the battle-field and assist the surgeons of the
beaten division, who had more on their hands than they could attend
to.  When I reached the barn that served for a temporary hospital,
I went at once to work.  Ah, Bob," said the Doctor, thoughtfully
taking the bright sword from the hands of the half-frightened Bob,
and holding it gravely before him, "these pretty playthings are
symbols of cruel, ugly realities.

"I turned to a tall, stout Vermonter," he continued very slowly,
tracing a pattern on the rug with the point of the scabbard, "who
was badly wounded in both thighs, but he held up his hands and
begged me to help others first who needed it more than he.  I did
not at first heed his request, for this kind of unselfishness was
very common in the army; but he went on, 'For God's sake, Doctor,
leave me here; there is a drummer-boy of our regiment--a mere
child--dying, if he isn't dead now.  Go, and see him first.  He
lies over there.  He saved more than one life.  He was at his post
in the panic this morning, and saved the honor of the regiment.'  I
was so much more impressed by the man's manner than by the
substance of his speech, which was, however, corroborated by the
other poor fellows stretched around me, that I passed over to where
the drummer lay, with his drum beside him.  I gave one glance at
his face--and--yes, Bob--yes, my children--it WAS Rupert.

"Well! well! it needed not the chalked cross which my brother-
surgeons had left upon the rough board whereon he lay to show how
urgent was the relief he sought; it needed not the prophetic words
of the Vermonter, nor the damp that mingled with the brown curls
that clung to his pale forehead, to show how hopeless it was now.
I called him by name.  He opened his eyes--larger, I thought, in
the new vision that was beginning to dawn upon him--and recognized
me.  He whispered, 'I'm glad you are come, but I don't think you
can do me any good.'

"I could not tell him a lie.  I could not say anything.  I only
pressed his hand in mine, as he went on.

"'But you will see father, and ask him to forgive me.  Nobody is to
blame but myself.  It was a long time before I understood why the
drum came to me that Christmas night, and why it kept calling to me
every night, and what it said.  I know it now.  The work is done,
and I am content.  Tell father it is better as it is.  I should
have lived only to worry and perplex him, and something in me tells
me this is right.'

"He lay still for a moment, and then, grasping my hand, said,--

"'Hark!'

"I listened, but heard nothing but the suppressed moans of the
wounded men around me.  'The drum,' he said faintly; 'don't you
hear it?  The drum is calling me.'

"He reached out his arm to where it lay, as though he would embrace
it.

"'Listen,' he went on, 'it's the reveille.  There are the ranks
drawn up in review.  Don't you see the sunlight flash down the long
line of bayonets?  Their faces are shining,--they present arms,--
there comes the General; but his face I cannot look at, for the
glory round his head.  He sees me; he smiles, it is--'  And with a
name upon his lips that he had learned long ago, he stretched
himself wearily upon the planks, and lay quite still.


"That's all.  No questions now; never mind what became of the drum.
Who's that snivelling?  Bless my soul, where's my pill-box?"





End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands, by Bret Harte