← catalogue

Openings in the Old Trail

by Bret Harte · English · Gutenberg #2535 · 373,354 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Openings in the Old Trail
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Openings in the Old Trail

Author: Bret Harte


        
Release date: May 18, 2006 [eBook #2535]
                Most recently updated: March 4, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2535

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OPENINGS IN THE OLD TRAIL ***




Produced by Donald Lainson





OPENINGS IN THE OLD TRAIL

by Bret Harte




CONTENTS


     OPENINGS IN THE OLD TRAIL

        I.  A MERCURY OF THE FOOT-HILLS
       II.  COLONEL STARBOTTLE FOR THE PLAINTIFF
      III.  THE LANDLORD OF THE BIG FLUME HOTEL
       IV.  A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE
        V.  THE REINCARNATION OF SMITH
       VI.  LANTY FOSTER'S MISTAKE
      VII.  AN ALI BABA OF THE SIERRAS
     VIII.  MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES
       IX.  THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR





OPENINGS IN THE OLD TRAIL

by Bret Harte




A MERCURY OF THE FOOT-HILLS


It was high hot noon on the Casket Ridge. Its very scant shade was
restricted to a few dwarf Scotch firs, and was so perpendicularly cast
that Leonidas Boone, seeking shelter from the heat, was obliged to draw
himself up under one of them, as if it were an umbrella. Occasionally,
with a boy's perversity, he permitted one bared foot to protrude beyond
the sharply marked shadow until the burning sun forced him to draw it in
again with a thrill of satisfaction. There was no earthly reason why
he had not sought the larger shadows of the pine-trees which reared
themselves against the Ridge on the slope below him, except that he was
a boy, and perhaps even more superstitious and opinionated than most
boys. Having got under this tree with infinite care, he had made up his
mind that he would not move from it until its line of shade reached and
touched a certain stone on the trail near him! WHY he did this he did
not know, but he clung to his sublime purpose with the courage and
tenacity of a youthful Casabianca. He was cramped, tickled by dust and
fir sprays; he was supremely uncomfortable--but he stayed! A woodpecker
was monotonously tapping in an adjacent pine, with measured intervals of
silence, which he always firmly believed was a certain telegraphy of
the bird's own making; a green-and-gold lizard flashed by his foot
to stiffen itself suddenly with a rigidity equal to his own. Still HE
stirred not. The shadow gradually crept nearer the mystic stone--and
touched it. He sprang up, shook himself, and prepared to go about
his business. This was simply an errand to the post-office at the
cross-roads, scarcely a mile from his father's house. He was already
halfway there. He had taken only the better part of one hour for this
desultory journey!

However, he now proceeded on his way, diverging only to follow a fresh
rabbit-track a few hundred yards, to note that the animal had doubled
twice against the wind, and then, naturally, he was obliged to look
closely for other tracks to determine its pursuers. He paused also,
but only for a moment, to rap thrice on the trunk of the pine where the
woodpecker was at work, which he knew would make it cease work for
a time--as it did. Having thus renewed his relations with nature, he
discovered that one of the letters he was taking to the post-office had
slipped in some mysterious way from the bosom of his shirt, where he
carried them, past his waist-band into his trouser-leg, and was about to
make a casual delivery of itself on the trail. This caused him to take
out his letters and count them, when he found one missing. He had been
given four letters to post--he had only three. There was a big one in
his father's handwriting, two indistinctive ones of his mother's, and a
smaller one of his sister's--THAT was gone! Not at all disconcerted,
he calmly retraced his steps, following his own tracks minutely, with
a grim face and a distinct delight in the process, while
looking--perfunctorily--for the letter. In the midst of this slow
progress a bright idea struck him. He walked back to the fir-tree where
he had rested, and found the lost missive. It had slipped out of his
shirt when he shook himself. He was not particularly pleased. He knew
that nobody would give him credit for his trouble in going back for
it, or his astuteness in guessing where it was. He heaved the sigh of
misunderstood genius, and again started for the post-office. This time
he carried the letters openly and ostentatiously in his hand.

Presently he heard a voice say, “Hey!” It was a gentle, musical
voice,--a stranger's voice, for it evidently did not know how to call
him, and did not say, “Oh, Leonidas!” or “You--look here!” He was
abreast of a little clearing, guarded by a low stockade of bark palings,
and beyond it was a small white dwelling-house. Leonidas knew the place
perfectly well. It belonged to the superintendent of a mining tunnel,
who had lately rented it to some strangers from San Francisco. Thus much
he had heard from his family. He had a mountain boy's contempt for city
folks, and was not himself interested in them. Yet as he heard the
call, he was conscious of a slightly guilty feeling. He might have been
trespassing in following the rabbit's track; he might have been seen by
some one when he lost the letter and had to go back for it--all grown-up
people had a way of offering themselves as witnesses against him! He
scowled a little as he glanced around him. Then his eye fell on the
caller on the other side of the stockade.

To his surprise it was a woman: a pretty, gentle, fragile creature, all
soft muslin and laces, with her fingers interlocked, and leaning both
elbows on the top of the stockade as she stood under the checkered
shadow of a buckeye.

“Come here--please--won't you?” she said pleasantly.

It would have been impossible to resist her voice if Leonidas had wanted
to, which he didn't. He walked confidently up to the fence. She really
was very pretty, with eyes like his setter's, and as caressing. And
there were little puckers and satiny creases around her delicate
nostrils and mouth when she spoke, which Leonidas knew were
“expression.”

“I--I”--she began, with charming hesitation; then suddenly, “What's your
name?”

“Leonidas.”

“Leonidas! That's a pretty name!” He thought it DID sound pretty. “Well,
Leonidas, I want you to be a good boy and do a great favor for me,--a
very great favor.”

Leonidas's face fell. This kind of prelude and formula was familiar to
him. It was usually followed by, “Promise me that you will never swear
again,” or, “that you will go straight home and wash your face,” or some
other irrelevant personality. But nobody with that sort of eyes had ever
said it. So he said, a little shyly but sincerely, “Yes, ma'am.”

“You are going to the post-office?”

This seemed a very foolish, womanish question, seeing that he was
holding letters in his hand; but he said, “Yes.”

“I want you to put a letter of mine among yours and post them all
together,” she said, putting one little hand to her bosom and drawing
out a letter. He noticed that she purposely held the addressed side so
that he could not see it, but he also noticed that her hand was
small, thin, and white, even to a faint tint of blue in it, unlike
his sister's, the baby's, or any other hand he had ever seen. “Can you
read?” she said suddenly, withdrawing the letter.

The boy flushed slightly at the question. “Of course I can,” he said
proudly.

“Of course, certainly,” she repeated quickly; “but,” she added, with
a mischievous smile, “you mustn't NOW! Promise me! Promise me that you
won't read this address, but just post the letter, like one of your own,
in the letter-box with the others.”

Leonidas promised readily; it seemed to him a great fuss about nothing;
perhaps it was some kind of game or a bet. He opened his sunburnt hand,
holding his own letters, and she slipped hers, face downward, between
them. Her soft fingers touched his in the operation, and seemed to leave
a pleasant warmth behind them.

“Promise me another thing,” she added; “promise me you won't say a word
of this to any one.”

“Of course!” said Leonidas.

“That's a good boy, and I know you will keep your word.” She hesitated
a moment, smilingly and tentatively, and then held out a bright
half-dollar. Leonidas backed from the fence. “I'd rather not,” he said
shyly.

“But as a present from ME?”

Leonidas colored--he was really proud; and he was also bright enough to
understand that the possession of such unbounded wealth would provoke
dangerous inquiry at home. But he didn't like to say it, and only
replied, “I can't.”

She looked at him curiously. “Then--thank you,” she said, offering her
white hand, which felt like a bird in his. “Now run on, and don't let
me keep you any longer.” She drew back from the fence as she spoke, and
waved him a pretty farewell. Leonidas, half sorry, half relieved, darted
away.

He ran to the post-office, which he never had done before. Loyally he
never looked at her letter, nor, indeed, at his own again, swinging
the hand that held them far from his side. He entered the post-office
directly, going at once to the letter-box and depositing the precious
missive with the others. The post-office was also the “country store,”
 and Leonidas was in the habit of still further protracting his errands
there by lingering in that stimulating atmosphere of sugar, cheese, and
coffee. But to-day his stay was brief, so transitory that the postmaster
himself inferred audibly that “old man Boone must have been tanning Lee
with a hickory switch.” But the simple reason was that Leonidas wished
to go back to the stockade fence and the fair stranger, if haply she
was still there. His heart sank as, breathless with unwonted haste, he
reached the clearing and the empty buckeye shade. He walked slowly and
with sad diffidence by the deserted stockade fence. But presently his
quick eye discerned a glint of white among the laurels near the house.
It was SHE, walking with apparent indifference away from him towards the
corner of the clearing and the road. But this he knew would bring her
to the end of the stockade fence, where he must pass--and it did. She
turned to him with a bright smile of affected surprise. “Why, you're as
swift-footed as Mercury!”

Leonidas understood her perfectly. Mercury was the other name for
quicksilver--and that was lively, you bet! He had often spilt some on
the floor to see it move. She must be awfully cute to have noticed it
too--cuter than his sisters. He was quite breathless with pleasure.

“I put your letter in the box all right,” he burst out at last.

“Without any one seeing it?” she asked.

“Sure pop! nary one! The postmaster stuck out his hand to grab it, but I
just let on that I didn't see him, and shoved it in myself.”

“You're as sharp as you're good,” she said smilingly. “Now, there's just
ONE thing more I want you to do. Forget all about this--won't you?”

Her voice was very caressing. Perhaps that was why he said boldly: “Yes,
ma'am, all except YOU.”

“Dear me, what a compliment! How old are you?”

“Goin' on fifteen,” said Leonidas confidently.

“And going very fast,” said the lady mischievously. “Well, then, you
needn't forget ME. On the contrary,” she added, after looking at him
curiously, “I would rather you'd remember me. Good-by--or, rather,
good-afternoon--if I'm to be remembered, Leon.”

“Good-afternoon, ma'am.”

She moved away, and presently disappeared among the laurels. But her
last words were ringing in his ears. “Leon”--everybody else called him
“Lee” for brevity; “Leon”--it was pretty as she said it.

He turned away. But it so chanced that their parting was not to pass
unnoticed, for, looking up the hill, Leonidas perceived his elder sister
and little brother coming down the road, and knew that they must have
seen him from the hilltop. It was like their “snoopin'”!

They ran to him eagerly.

“You were talking to the stranger,” said his sister breathlessly.

“She spoke to me first,” said Leonidas, on the defensive.

“What did she say?”

“Wanted to know the eleckshun news,” said Leonidas with cool mendacity,
“and I told her.”

This improbable fiction nevertheless satisfied them. “What was she like?
Oh, do tell us, Lee!” continued his sister.

Nothing would have delighted him more than to expatiate upon her
loveliness, the soft white beauty of her hands, the “cunning” little
puckers around her lips, her bright tender eyes, the angelic texture
of her robes, and the musical tinkle of her voice. But Leonidas had no
confidant, and what healthy boy ever trusted his sister in such matter!
“YOU saw what she was like,” he said, with evasive bluntness.

“But, Lee”--

But Lee was adamant. “Go and ask her,” he said.

“Like as not you were sassy to her, and she shut you up,” said his
sister artfully. But even this cruel suggestion, which he could have so
easily flouted, did not draw him, and his ingenious relations flounced
disgustedly away.

But Leonidas was not spared any further allusion to the fair stranger;
for the fact of her having spoken to him was duly reported at home, and
at dinner his reticence was again sorely attacked. “Just like her, in
spite of all her airs and graces, to hang out along the fence like any
ordinary hired girl, jabberin' with anybody that went along the road,”
 said his mother incisively. He knew that she didn't like her new
neighbors, so this did not surprise nor greatly pain him. Neither did
the prosaic facts that were now first made plain to him. His divinity
was a Mrs. Burroughs, whose husband was conducting a series of mining
operations, and prospecting with a gang of men on the Casket Ridge.
As his duty required his continual presence there, Mrs. Burroughs was
forced to forego the civilized pleasures of San Francisco for a frontier
life, for which she was ill fitted, and in which she had no interest.
All this was a vague irrelevance to Leonidas, who knew her only as a
goddess in white who had been familiar to him, and kind, and to whom he
was tied by the delicious joy of having a secret in common, and having
done her a special favor. Healthy youth clings to its own impressions,
let reason, experience, and even facts argue ever to the contrary.

So he kept her secret and his intact, and was rewarded a few days
afterwards by a distant view of her walking in the garden, with a man
whom he recognized as her husband. It is needless to say that, without
any extraneous thought, the man suffered in Leonidas's estimation by his
propinquity to the goddess, and that he deemed him vastly inferior.

It was a still greater reward to his fidelity that she seized an
opportunity when her husband's head was turned to wave her hand to him.
Leonidas did not approach the fence, partly through shyness and partly
through a more subtle instinct that this man was not in the secret. He
was right, for only the next day, as he passed to the post-office, she
called him to the fence.

“Did you see me wave my hand to you yesterday?” she asked pleasantly.

“Yes, ma'am; but”--he hesitated--“I didn't come up, for I didn't think
you wanted me when any one else was there.”

She laughed merrily, and lifting his straw hat from his head, ran the
fingers of the other hand through his damp curls. “You're the brightest,
dearest boy I ever knew, Leon,” she said, dropping her pretty face to
the level of his own, “and I ought to have remembered it. But I
don't mind telling you I was dreadfully frightened lest you might
misunderstand me and come and ask for another letter--before HIM.” As
she emphasized the personal pronoun, her whole face seemed to change:
the light of her blue eyes became mere glittering points, her nostrils
grew white and contracted, and her pretty little mouth seemed to narrow
into a straight cruel line, like a cat's. “Not a word ever to HIM,
of all men! Do you hear?” she said almost brusquely. Then, seeing the
concern in the boy's face, she laughed, and added explanatorily: “He's a
bad, bad man, Leon, remember that.”

The fact that she was speaking of her husband did not shock the boy's
moral sense in the least. The sacredness of those relations, and even of
blood kinship, is, I fear, not always so clear to the youthful mind as
we fondly imagine. That Mr. Burroughs was a bad man to have excited
this change in this lovely woman was Leonidas's only conclusion. He
remembered how his sister's soft, pretty little kitten, purring on her
lap, used to get its back up and spit at the postmaster's yellow hound.

“I never wished to come unless you called me first,” he said frankly.

“What?” she said, in her half playful, half reproachful, but wholly
caressing way. “You mean to say you would never come to see me unless I
sent for you? Oh, Leon! and you'd abandon me in that way?”

But Leonidas was set in his own boyish superstition. “I'd just delight
in being sent for by you any time, Mrs. Burroughs, and you kin always
find me,” he said shyly, but doggedly; “but”--He stopped.

“What an opinionated young gentleman! Well, I see I must do all the
courting. So consider that I sent for you this morning. I've got another
letter for you to mail.” She put her hand to her breast, and out of the
pretty frillings of her frock produced, as before, with the same faint
perfume of violets, a letter like the first. But it was unsealed. “Now,
listen, Leon; we are going to be great friends--you and I.” Leonidas
felt his cheeks glowing. “You are going to do me another great favor,
and we are going to have a little fun and a great secret all by our own
selves. Now, first, have you any correspondent--you know--any one who
writes to you--any boy or girl--from San Francisco?”

Leonidas's cheeks grew redder--alas! from a less happy consciousness. He
never received any letters; nobody ever wrote to him. He was obliged to
make this shameful admission.

Mrs. Burroughs looked thoughtful. “But you have some friend in San
Francisco--some one who MIGHT write to you?” she suggested pleasantly.

“I knew a boy once who went to San Francisco,” said Leonidas doubtfully.
“At least, he allowed he was goin' there.”

“That will do,” said Mrs. Burroughs. “I suppose your parents know him or
of him?”

“Why,” said Leonidas, “he used to live here.”

“Better still. For, you see, it wouldn't be strange if he DID write.
What was the gentleman's name?”

“Jim Belcher,” returned Leonidas hesitatingly, by no means sure that the
absent Belcher knew how to write. Mrs. Burroughs took a tiny pencil from
her belt, opened the letter she was holding in her hand, and apparently
wrote the name in it. Then she folded it and sealed it, smiling
charmingly at Leonidas's puzzled face.

“Now, Leon, listen; for here is the favor I am asking. Mr. Jim
Belcher”--she pronounced the name with great gravity--“will write to you
in a few days. But inside of YOUR letter will be a little note to me,
which you will bring me. You can show your letter to your family, if
they want to know who it is from; but no one must see MINE. Can you
manage that?”

“Yes,” said Leonidas. Then, as the whole idea flashed upon his quick
intelligence, he smiled until he showed his dimples. Mrs. Burroughs
leaned forward over the fence, lifted his torn straw hat, and dropped
a fluttering little kiss on his forehead. It seemed to the boy, flushed
and rosy as a maid, as if she had left a shining star there for every
one to see.

“Don't smile like that, Leon, you're positively irresistible! It will be
a nice little game, won't it? Nobody in it but you and me--and Belcher!
We'll outwit them yet. And, you see, you'll be obliged to come to me,
after all, without my asking.”

They both laughed; indeed, quite a dimpled, bright-eyed, rosy, innocent
pair, though I think Leonidas was the more maidenly.

“And,” added Leonidas, with breathless eagerness, “I can sometimes write
to--to--Jim, and inclose your letter.”

“Angel of wisdom! certainly. Well, now, let's see--have you got any
letters for the post to-day?” He colored again, for in anticipation of
meeting her he had hurried up the family post that morning. He held out
his letters: she thrust her own among them. “Now,” she said, laying her
cool, soft hand against his hot cheek, “run along, dear; you must not be
seen loitering here.”

Leonidas ran off, buoyed up on ambient air. It seemed just like a
fairy-book. Here he was, the confidant of the most beautiful creature he
had seen, and there was a mysterious letter coming to him--Leonidas--and
no one to know why. And now he had a “call” to see her often; she would
not forget him--he needn't loiter by the fencepost to see if she wanted
him--and his boyish pride and shyness were appeased. There was no
question of moral ethics raised in Leonidas's mind; he knew that it
would not be the real Jim Belcher who would write to him, but that made
the prospect the more attractive. Nor did another circumstance trouble
his conscience. When he reached the post-office, he was surprised to see
the man whom he knew to be Mr. Burroughs talking with the postmaster.
Leonidas brushed by him and deposited his letters in the box in
discreet triumph. The postmaster was evidently officially resenting some
imputation on his carelessness, and, concluding his defense, “No, sir,”
 he said, “you kin bet your boots that ef any letter hez gone astray for
you or your wife--Ye said your wife, didn't ye?”

“Yes,” said Burroughs hastily, with a glance around the shop.

“Well, for you or anybody at your house--it ain't here that's the fault.
You hear me! I know every letter that comes in and goes outer this
office, I reckon, and handle 'em all,”--Leonidas pricked up his
ears,--“and if anybody oughter know, it's me. Ye kin paste that in your
hat, Mr. Burroughs.” Burroughs, apparently disconcerted by the intrusion
of a third party--Leonidas--upon what was evidently a private inquiry,
murmured something surlily, and passed out.

Leonidas was puzzled. That big man seemed to be “snoopin'” around for
something! He knew that he dared not touch the letter-bag,--Leonidas had
heard somewhere that it was a deadly crime to touch any letters after
the Government had got hold of them once, and he had no fears for the
safety of hers. But ought he not go back at once and tell her about
her husband's visit, and the alarming fact that the postmaster was
personally acquainted with all the letters? He instantly saw, too, the
wisdom of her inclosing her letter hereafter in another address. Yet he
finally resolved not to tell her to-day,--it would look like “hanging
round” again; and--another secret reason--he was afraid that any
allusion to her husband's interference would bring back that change
in her beautiful face which he did not like. The better to resist
temptation, he went back another way.

It must not be supposed that, while Leonidas indulged in this secret
passion for the beautiful stranger, it was to the exclusion of his
boyish habits. It merely took the place of his intellectual visions and
his romantic reading. He no longer carried books in his pocket on his
lazy rambles. What were mediaeval legends of high-born ladies and their
pages to this real romance of himself and Mrs. Burroughs? What were the
exploits of boy captains and juvenile trappers and the Indian maidens
and Spanish senoritas to what was now possible to himself and his
divinity here--upon Casket Ridge! The very ground around her was now
consecrated to romance and adventure. Consequently, he visited a
few traps on his way back which he had set for “jackass-rabbits” and
wildcats,--the latter a vindictive reprisal for aggression upon an
orphan brood of mountain quail which he had taken under his protection.
For, while he nourished a keen love of sport, it was controlled by a
boy's larger understanding of nature: a pantheistic sympathy with
man and beast and plant, which made him keenly alive to the strange
cruelties of creation, revealed to him some queer animal feuds, and made
him a chivalrous partisan of the weaker. He had even gone out of his way
to defend, by ingenious contrivances of his own, the hoard of a golden
squirrel and the treasures of some wild bees from a predatory bear,
although it did not prevent him later from capturing the squirrel by an
equally ingenious contrivance, and from eventually eating some of the
honey.

He was late home that evening. But this was “vacation,”--the district
school was closed, and but for the household “chores,” which occupied
his early mornings, each long summer day was a holiday. So two or three
passed; and then one morning, on his going to the post-office, the
postmaster threw down upon the counter a real and rather bulky letter,
duly stamped, and addressed to Mr. Leonidas Boone! Leonidas was too
discreet to open it before witnesses, but in the solitude of the
trail home broke the seal. It contained another letter with no
address--clearly the one SHE expected--and, more marvelous still, a
sheaf of trout-hooks, with delicate gut-snells such as Leonidas had
only dared to dream of. The letter to himself was written in a clear,
distinct hand, and ran as follows:--


DEAR LEE,--How are you getting on on old Casket Ridge? It seems a coon's
age since you and me was together, and times I get to think I must just
run up and see you! We're having bully times in 'Frisco, you bet! though
there ain't anything wild worth shucks to go to see--'cept the sea
lions at the Cliff House. They're just stunning--big as a grizzly, and
bigger--climbing over a big rock or swimming in the sea like an otter or
muskrat. I'm sending you some snells and hooks, such as you can't get at
Casket. Use the fine ones for pot-holes and the bigger ones for running
water or falls. Let me know when you've got 'em. Write to Lock Box No.
1290. That's where dad's letters come. So no more at present.

From yours truly,

JIM BELCHER.


Not only did Leonidas know that this was not from the real Jim, but he
felt the vague contact of a new, charming, and original personality
that fascinated him. Of course, it was only natural that one of HER
friends--as he must be--should be equally delightful. There was no
jealousy in Leonidas's devotion; he knew only a joy in this fellowship
of admiration for her which he was satisfied that the other boy must
feel. And only the right kind of boy could know the importance of
his ravishing gift, and this Jim was evidently “no slouch”! Yet, in
Leonidas's new joy he did not forget HER! He ran back to the stockade
fence and lounged upon the road in view of the house, but she did not
appear.

Leonidas lingered on the top of the hill, ostentatiously examining a
young hickory for a green switch, but to no effect. Then it suddenly
occurred to him that she might be staying in purposely, and, perhaps
a little piqued by her indifference, he ran off. There was a mountain
stream hard by, now dwindled in the summer drouth to a mere trickling
thread among the boulders, and there was a certain “pot-hole” that he
had long known. It was the lurking-place of a phenomenal trout,--an
almost historic fish in the district, which had long resisted the
attempt of such rude sportsmen as miners, or even experts like himself.
Few had seen it, except as a vague, shadowy bulk in the four feet of
depth and gloom in which it hid; only once had Leonidas's quick eye
feasted on its fair proportions. On that memorable occasion Leonidas,
having exhausted every kind of lure of painted fly and living bait,
was rising from his knees behind the bank, when a pink five-cent stamp
dislodged from his pocket fluttered in the air, and descended slowly
upon the still pool. Horrified at his loss, Leonidas leaned over to
recover it, when there was a flash like lightning in the black depths, a
dozen changes of light and shadow on the surface, a little whirling wave
splashing against the side of the rock, and the postage stamp was gone.
More than that--for one instant the trout remained visible, stationary
and expectant! Whether it was the instinct of sport, or whether the fish
had detected a new, subtle, and original flavor in the gum and paper,
Leonidas never knew. Alas! he had not another stamp; he was obliged to
leave the fish, but carried a brilliant idea away with him. Ever since
then he had cherished it--and another extra stamp in his pocket. And
now, with this strong but gossamer-like snell, this new hook, and this
freshly cut hickory rod, he would make the trial!

But fate was against him! He had scarcely descended the narrow trail to
the pine-fringed margin of the stream before his quick ear detected an
unusual rustling through the adjacent underbrush, and then a voice that
startled him! It was HERS! In an instant all thought of sport had fled.
With a beating heart, half opened lips, and uplifted lashes, Leonidas
awaited the coming of his divinity like a timorous virgin at her first
tryst.

But Mrs. Burroughs was clearly not in an equally responsive mood. With
her fair face reddened by the sun, the damp tendrils of her unwound hair
clinging to her forehead, and her smart little slippers red with dust,
there was also a querulous light in her eyes, and a still more querulous
pinch in her nostrils, as she stood panting before him.

“You tiresome boy!” she gasped, holding one little hand to her side as
she gripped her brambled skirt around her ankles with the other. “Why
didn't you wait? Why did you make me run all this distance after you?”

Leonidas timidly and poignantly protested. He had waited before the
house and on the hill; he thought she didn't want him.

“Couldn't you see that THAT MAN kept me in?” she went on peevishly.
“Haven't you sense enough to know that he suspects something, and
follows me everywhere, dogging my footsteps every time the post comes
in, and even going to the post-office himself, to make sure that he sees
all my letters? Well,” she added impatiently, “have you anything for me?
Why don't you speak?”

Crushed and remorseful, Leonidas produced her letter. She almost
snatched it from his hand, opened it, read a few lines, and her face
changed. A smile strayed from her eyes to her lips, and back again.
Leonidas's heart was lifted; she was so forgiving and so beautiful!

“Is he a boy, Mrs. Burroughs?” asked Leonidas shyly.

“Well--not exactly,” she said, her charming face all radiant again.
“He's older than you. What has he written to you?”

Leonidas put his letter in her hand for reply.

“I wish I could see him, you know,” he said shyly. “That letter's
bully--it's just rats! I like him pow'ful.”

Mrs. Burroughs had skimmed through the letter, but not interestedly.

“You mustn't like him more than you like me,” she said laughingly,
caressing him with her voice and eyes, and even her straying hand.

“I couldn't do that! I never could like anybody as I like you,” said.
Leonidas gravely. There was such appalling truthfulness in the boy's
voice and frankly opened eyes that the woman could not evade it, and
was slightly disconcerted. But she presently started up with a vexatious
cry. “There's that wretch following me again, I do believe,” she said,
staring at the hilltop. “Yes! Look, Leon, he's turning to come down this
trail. What's to be done? He mustn't see me here!”

Leonidas looked. It was indeed Mr. Burroughs; but he was evidently
only taking a short cut towards the Ridge, where his men were working.
Leonidas had seen him take it before. But it was the principal trail on
the steep hillside, and they must eventually meet. A man might evade
it by scrambling through the brush to a lower and rougher trail; but a
woman, never! But an idea had seized Leonidas. “I can stop him,” he said
confidently to her. “You just lie low here behind that rock till I come
back. He hasn't seen you yet.”

She had barely time to draw back before Leonidas darted down the trail
towards her husband. Yet, in her intense curiosity, she leaned out
the next moment to watch him. He paused at last, not far from the
approaching figure, and seemed to kneel down on the trail. What was he
doing? Her husband was still slowly advancing. Suddenly he stopped. At
the same moment she heard their two voices in excited parley, and then,
to her amazement, she saw her husband scramble hurriedly down the trail
to the lower level, and with an occasional backward glance, hasten away
until he had passed beyond her view.

She could scarcely realize her narrow escape when Leonidas stood by her
side. “How did you do it?” she said eagerly.

“With a rattler!” said the boy gravely.

“With a what?”

“A rattlesnake--pizen snake, you know.”

“A rattlesnake?” she said, staring at Leonidas with a quick snatching
away of her skirts.

The boy, who seemed to have forgotten her in his other abstraction of
adventure, now turned quickly, with devoted eyes and a reassuring smile.

“Yes; but I wouldn't let him hurt you,” he said gently.

“But what did you DO?”

He looked at her curiously. “You won't be frightened if I show you?” he
said doubtfully. “There's nothin' to be afeerd of s'long as you're with
me,” he added proudly.

“Yes--that is”--she stammered, and then, her curiosity getting the
better of her fear, she added in a whisper: “Show me quick!”

He led the way up the narrow trail until he stopped where he had knelt
before. It was a narrow, sunny ledge of rock, scarcely wide enough for
a single person to pass. He silently pointed to a cleft in the rock, and
kneeling down again, began to whistle in a soft, fluttering way. There
was a moment of suspense, and then she was conscious of an awful gliding
something,--a movement so measured yet so exquisitely graceful that she
stood enthralled. A narrow, flattened, expressionless head was followed
by a footlong strip of yellow-barred scales; then there was a pause, and
the head turned, in a beautifully symmetrical half-circle, towards the
whistler. The whistling ceased; the snake, with half its body out of the
cleft, remained poised in air as if stiffened to stone.

“There,” said Leonidas quietly, “that's what Mr. Burroughs saw, and
that's WHY he scooted off the trail. I just called out William Henry,--I
call him William Henry, and he knows his name,--and then I sang out to
Mr. Burroughs what was up; and it was lucky I did, for the next moment
he'd have been on top of him and have been struck, for rattlers don't
give way to any one.”

“Oh, why didn't you let”--She stopped herself quickly, but could not
stop the fierce glint in her eye nor the sharp curve in her nostril.
Luckily, Leonidas did not see this, being preoccupied with his other
graceful charmer, William Henry.

“But how did you know it was here?” said Mrs. Burroughs, recovering
herself.

“Fetched him here,” said Leonidas briefly.

“What in your hands?” she said, drawing back.

“No! made him follow! I HAVE handled him, but it was after I'd first
made him strike his pizen out upon a stick. Ye know, after he strikes
four times he ain't got any pizen left. Then ye kin do anythin' with
him, and he knows it. He knows me, you bet! I've bin three months
trainin' him. Look! Don't be frightened,” he said, as Mrs. Burroughs
drew hurriedly back; “see him mind me. Now scoot home, William Henry.”

He accompanied the command with a slow, dominant movement of the hickory
rod he was carrying. The snake dropped its head, and slid noiselessly
out of the cleft across the trail and down the hill.

“Thinks my rod is witch-hazel, which rattlers can't abide,” continued
Leonidas, dropping into a boy's breathless abbreviated speech. “Lives
down your way--just back of your farm. Show ye some day. Suns himself on
a flat stone every day--always cold--never can get warm. Eh?”

She had not spoken, but was gazing into space with a breathless rigidity
of attitude and a fixed look in her eye, not unlike the motionless orbs
of the reptile that had glided away.

“Does anybody else know you keep him?” she asked.

“Nary one. I never showed him to anybody but you,” replied the boy.

“Don't! You must show me where he hides to-morrow,” she said, in her old
laughing way. “And now, Leon, I must go back to the house.”

“May I write to him--to Jim Belcher, Mrs. Burroughs?” said the boy
timidly.

“Certainly. And come to me to-morrow with your letter--I will have mine
ready. Good-by.” She stopped and glanced at the trail. “And you say that
if that man had kept on, the snake would have bitten him?”

“Sure pop!--if he'd trod on him--as he was sure to. The snake wouldn't
have known he didn't mean it. It's only natural,” continued Leonidas,
with glowing partisanship for the gentle and absent William Henry. “YOU
wouldn't like to be trodden upon, Mrs. Burroughs!”

“No! I'd strike out!” she said quickly. She made a rapid motion forward
with her low forehead and level head, leaving it rigid the next moment,
so that it reminded him of the snake, and he laughed. At which she
laughed too, and tripped away.

Leonidas went back and caught his trout. But even this triumph did not
remove a vague sense of disappointment which had come over him. He had
often pictured to himself a Heaven-sent meeting with her in the woods,
a walk with her, alone, where he could pick her the rarest flowers and
herbs and show her his woodland friends; and it had only ended in this,
and an exhibition of William Henry! He ought to have saved HER from
something, and not her husband. Yet he had no ill-feeling for Burroughs,
only a desire to circumvent him, on behalf of the unprotected, as he
would have baffled a hawk or a wildcat. He went home in dismal spirits,
but later that evening constructed a boyish letter of thanks to the
apocryphal Belcher and told him all about--the trout!

He brought her his letter the next day, and received hers to inclose.
She was pleasant, her own charming self again, but she seemed more
interested in other things than himself, as, for instance, the docile
William Henry, whose hiding-place he showed, and whose few tricks she
made him exhibit to her, and which the gratified Leonidas accepted as a
delicate form of flattery to himself. But his yearning, innocent spirit
detected a something lacking, which he was too proud to admit even to
himself. It was his own fault; he ought to have waited for her, and not
gone for the trout!

So a fortnight passed with an interchange of the vicarious letters, and
brief, hopeful, and disappointing meetings to Leonidas. To add to his
unhappiness, he was obliged to listen to sneering disparagement of his
goddess from his family, and criticisms which, happily, his innocence
did not comprehend. It was his own mother who accused her of shamefully
“making up” to the good-looking expressman at church last Sunday, and
declared that Burroughs ought to “look after that wife of his,”--two
statements which the simple Leonidas could not reconcile. He had seen
the incident, and only thought her more lovely than ever. Why should not
the expressman think so too? And yet the boy was not happy; something
intruded upon his sports, upon his books, making them dull and vapid,
and yet that something was she! He grew pale and preoccupied. If he had
only some one in whom to confide--some one who could explain his hopes
and fears. That one was nearer than he thought!

It was quite three weeks since the rattlesnake incident, and he was
wandering moodily over Casket Ridge. He was near the Casket, that abrupt
upheaval of quartz and gneiss, shaped like a coffer, from which the
mountain took its name. It was a favorite haunt of Leonidas, one of
whose boyish superstitions was that it contained a treasure of gold, and
one of whose brightest dreams had been that he should yet discover it.
This he did not do to-day, but looking up from the rocks that he was
listlessly examining, he made the almost as thrilling discovery that
near him on the trail was a distinguished-looking stranger.

He was bestriding a shapely mustang, which well became his handsome
face and slight, elegant figure, and he was looking at Leonidas with
an amused curiosity and a certain easy assurance that were difficult to
withstand. It was with the same fascinating self-confidence of smile,
voice, and manner that he rode up to the boy, and leaning lightly over
his saddle, said with exaggerated politeness: “I believe I have the
pleasure of addressing Mr. Leonidas Boone?”

The rising color in Leonidas's face was apparently a sufficient
answer to the stranger, for he continued smilingly, “Then permit me to
introduce myself as Mr. James Belcher. As you perceive, I have grown
considerably since you last saw me. In fact, I've done nothing else.
It's surprising what a fellow can do when he sets his mind on one thing.
And then, you know, they're always telling you that San Francisco is a
'growing place.' That accounts for it!”

Leonidas, dazed, dazzled, but delighted, showed all his white teeth in a
shy laugh. At which the enchanting stranger leaped from his horse like
a very boy, drew his arm through the rein, and going up to Leonidas,
lifted the boy's straw hat from his head and ran his fingers through his
curls. There was nothing original in that--everybody did that to him as
a preliminary to conversation. But when this ingenuous fine gentleman
put his own Panama hat on Leonidas's head, and clapped Leonidas's torn
straw on his own, and, passing his arm through the boy's, began to walk
on with him, Leonidas's simple heart went out to him at once.

“And now, Leon,” said the delightful stranger, “let's you and me have
a talk. There's a nice cool spot under these laurels; I'll stake out
Pepita, and we'll just lie off there and gab, and not care if school
keeps or not.”

“But you know you ain't really Jim Belcher,” said the boy shyly.

“I'm as good a man as he is any day, whoever I am,” said the stranger,
with humorous defiance, “and can lick him out of his boots, whoever HE
is. That ought to satisfy you. But if you want my certificate, here's
your own letter, old man,” he said, producing Leonidas's last scrawl
from his pocket.

“And HERS?” said the boy cautiously.

The stranger's face changed a little. “And HERS,” he repeated gravely,
showing a little pink note which Leonidas recognized as one of Mrs.
Burroughs's inclosures. The boy was silent until they reached the
laurels, where the stranger tethered his horse and then threw himself
in an easy attitude beneath the tree, with the back of his head upon his
clasped hands. Leonidas could see his curved brown mustaches and silky
lashes that were almost as long, and thought him the handsomest man he
had ever beheld.

“Well, Leon,” said the stranger, stretching himself out comfortably and
pulling the boy down beside him, “how are things going on the Casket?
All serene, eh?”

The inquiry so dismally recalled Leonidas's late feelings that his face
clouded, and he involuntarily sighed. The stranger instantly shifted his
head and gazed curiously at him. Then he took the boy's sunburnt hand in
his own, and held it a moment. “Well, go on,” he said.

“Well, Mr.--Mr.--I can't go on--I won't!” said Leonidas, with a sudden
fit of obstinacy. “I don't know what to call you.”

“Call me 'Jack'--'Jack Hamlin' when you're not in a hurry. Ever heard of
me before?” he added, suddenly turning his head towards Leonidas.

The boy shook his head. “No.”

Mr. Jack Hamlin lifted his lashes in affected expostulation to the
skies. “And this is Fame!” he murmured audibly.

But this Leonidas did not comprehend. Nor could he understand why the
stranger, who clearly must have come to see HER, should not ask about
her, should not rush to seek her, but should lie back there all the
while so contentedly on the grass. HE wouldn't. He half resented it, and
then it occurred to him that this fine gentleman was like himself--shy.
Who could help being so before such an angel? HE would help him on.

And so, shyly at first, but bit by bit emboldened by a word or two from
Jack, he began to talk of her--of her beauty--of her kindness--of his
own unworthiness--of what she had said and done--until, finding in this
gracious stranger the vent his pent-up feelings so long had sought, he
sang then and there the little idyl of his boyish life. He told of his
decline in her affections after his unpardonable sin in keeping her
waiting while he went for the trout, and added the miserable mistake of
the rattlesnake episode. “For it was a mistake, Mr. Hamlin. I oughtn't
to have let a lady like that know anything about snakes--just because I
happen to know them.”

“It WAS an awful slump, Lee,” said Hamlin gravely. “Get a woman and
a snake together--and where are you? Think of Adam and Eve and the
serpent, you know.”

“But it wasn't that way,” said the boy earnestly. “And I want to tell
you something else that's just makin' me sick, Mr. Hamlin. You know I
told you William Henry lives down at the bottom of Burroughs's garden,
and how I showed Mrs. Burroughs his tricks! Well, only two days ago I
was down there looking for him, and couldn't find him anywhere. There's
a sort of narrow trail from the garden to the hill, a short cut up to
the Ridge, instead o' going by their gate. It's just the trail any one
would take in a hurry, or if they didn't want to be seen from the road.
Well! I was looking this way and that for William Henry, and whistlin'
for him, when I slipped on to the trail. There, in the middle of it, was
an old bucket turned upside down--just the thing a man would kick away
or a woman lift up. Well, Mr. Hamlin, I kicked it away, and”--the boy
stopped, with rounded eyes and bated breath, and added--“I just had time
to give one jump and save myself! For under that pail, cramped down so
he couldn't get out, and just bilin' over with rage, and chockful of
pizen, was William Henry! If it had been anybody else less spry, they'd
have got bitten,--and that's just what the sneak who put it there knew.”

Mr. Hamlin uttered an exclamation under his breath, and rose to his
feet.

“What did you say?” asked the boy quickly.

“Nothing,” said Mr. Hamlin.

But it had sounded to Leonidas like an oath.

Mr. Hamlin walked a few steps, as if stretching his limbs, and then
said: “And you think Burroughs would have been bitten?”

“Why, no!” said Leonidas in astonished indignation; “of course not--not
BURROUGHS. It would have been poor MRS. Burroughs. For, of course, HE
set that trap for her--don't you see? Who else would do it?”

“Of course, of course! Certainly,” said Mr. Hamlin coolly. “Of course,
as you say, HE set the trap--yes--you just hang on to that idea.”

But something in Mr. Hamlin's manner, and a peculiar look in his eye,
did not satisfy Leonidas. “Are you going to see her now?” he said
eagerly. “I can show you the house, and then run in and tell her you're
outside in the laurels.”

“Not just yet,” said Mr. Hamlin, laying his hand on the boy's head
after having restored his own hat. “You see, I thought of giving her a
surprise. A big surprise!” he added slowly. After a pause, he went on:
“Did you tell her what you had seen?”

“Of course I did,” said Leonidas reproachfully. “Did you think I was
going to let her get bit? It might have killed her.”

“And it might not have been an unmixed pleasure for William Henry. I
mean,” said Mr. Hamlin gravely, correcting himself, “YOU would never
have forgiven him. But what did she say?”

The boy's face clouded. “She thanked me and said it was very
thoughtful--and kind--though it might have been only an accident”--he
stammered--“and then she said perhaps I was hanging round and coming
there a little too much lately, and that as Burroughs was very watchful,
I'd better quit for two or three days.” The tears were rising to his
eyes, but by putting his two clenched fists into his pockets, he managed
to hold them down. Perhaps Mr. Hamlin's soft hand on his head assisted
him. Mr. Hamlin took from his pocket a notebook, and tearing out a leaf,
sat down again and began to write on his knee. After a pause, Leonidas
said,--

“Was you ever in love, Mr. Hamlin?”

“Never,” said Mr. Hamlin, quietly continuing to write. “But, now you
speak of it, it's a long-felt want in my nature that I intend to supply
some day. But not until I've made my pile. And don't YOU either.” He
continued writing, for it was this gentleman's peculiarity to talk
without apparently the slightest concern whether anybody else spoke,
whether he was listened to, or whether his remarks were at all relevant
to the case. Yet he was always listened to for that reason. When he had
finished writing, he folded up the paper, put it in an envelope, and
addressed it.

“Shall I take it to her?” said Leonidas eagerly.

“It's not for HER; it's for him--Mr. Burroughs,” said Mr. Hamlin
quietly.

The boy drew back. “To get him out of the way,” added Hamlin
explanatorily. “When he gets it, lightning wouldn't keep him here. Now,
how to send it,” he said thoughtfully.

“You might leave it at the post-office,” said Leonidas timidly. “He
always goes there to watch his wife's letters.”

For the first time in their interview Mr. Hamlin distinctly laughed.

“Your head is level, Leo, and I'll do it. Now the best thing you can do
is to follow Mrs. Burroughs's advice. Quit going to the house for a day
or two.” He walked towards his horse. The boy's face sank, but he kept
up bravely. “And will I see you again?” he said wistfully.

Mr. Hamlin lowered his face so near the boy's that Leonidas could see
himself in the brown depths of Mr. Hamlin's eyes. “I hope you will,”
 he said gravely. He mounted, shook the boy's hand, and rode away in the
lengthening shadows. Then Leonidas walked sadly home.

There was no need for him to keep his promise; for the next morning the
family were stirred by the announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs had
left Casket Ridge that night by the down stage for Sacramento, and that
the house was closed. There were various rumors concerning the reason of
this sudden departure, but only one was persistent, and borne out by
the postmaster. It was that Mr. Burroughs had received that afternoon an
anonymous note that his wife was about to elope with the notorious San
Francisco gambler, Jack Hamlin.

But Leonidas Boone, albeit half understanding, kept his miserable secret
with a still hopeful and trustful heart. It grieved him a little that
William Henry was found a few days later dead, with his head crushed.
Yet it was not until years later, when he had made a successful
“prospect” on Casket Ridge, that he met Mr. Hamlin in San Francisco,
and knew how he had played the part of Mercury upon that “heaven-kissing
hill.”




COLONEL STARBOTTLE FOR THE PLAINTIFF


It had been a day of triumph for Colonel Starbottle. First, for his
personality, as it would have been difficult to separate the Colonel's
achievements from his individuality; second, for his oratorical
abilities as a sympathetic pleader; and third, for his functions as the
leading legal counsel for the Eureka Ditch Company versus the State of
California. On his strictly legal performances in this issue I prefer
not to speak; there were those who denied them, although the jury had
accepted them in the face of the ruling of the half amused, half cynical
Judge himself. For an hour they had laughed with the Colonel, wept with
him, been stirred to personal indignation or patriotic exaltation by
his passionate and lofty periods,--what else could they do than give him
their verdict? If it was alleged by some that the American eagle, Thomas
Jefferson, and the Resolutions of '98 had nothing whatever to do with
the contest of a ditch company over a doubtfully worded legislative
document; that wholesale abuse of the State Attorney and his political
motives had not the slightest connection with the legal question
raised--it was, nevertheless, generally accepted that the losing party
would have been only too glad to have the Colonel on their side. And
Colonel Starbottle knew this, as, perspiring, florid, and panting, he
rebuttoned the lower buttons of his blue frock-coat, which had become
loosed in an oratorical spasm, and readjusted his old-fashioned,
spotless shirt frill above it as he strutted from the court-room amidst
the handshakings and acclamations of his friends.

And here an unprecedented thing occurred. The Colonel absolutely
declined spirituous refreshment at the neighboring Palmetto Saloon,
and declared his intention of proceeding directly to his office in the
adjoining square. Nevertheless, the Colonel quitted the building alone,
and apparently unarmed, except for his faithful gold-headed stick,
which hung as usual from his forearm. The crowd gazed after him with
undisguised admiration of this new evidence of his pluck. It was
remembered also that a mysterious note had been handed to him at
the conclusion of his speech,--evidently a challenge from the State
Attorney. It was quite plain that the Colonel--a practiced duelist--was
hastening home to answer it.

But herein they were wrong. The note was in a female hand, and simply
requested the Colonel to accord an interview with the writer at the
Colonel's office as soon as he left the court. But it was an engagement
that the Colonel--as devoted to the fair sex as he was to the
“code”--was no less prompt in accepting. He flicked away the dust from
his spotless white trousers and varnished boots with his handkerchief,
and settled his black cravat under his Byron collar as he neared his
office. He was surprised, however, on opening the door of his private
office, to find his visitor already there; he was still more startled to
find her somewhat past middle age and plainly attired. But the Colonel
was brought up in a school of Southern politeness, already antique in
the republic, and his bow of courtesy belonged to the epoch of his
shirt frill and strapped trousers. No one could have detected his
disappointment in his manner, albeit his sentences were short
and incomplete. But the Colonel's colloquial speech was apt to be
fragmentary incoherencies of his larger oratorical utterances.

“A thousand pardons--for--er--having kept a lady waiting--er!
But--er--congratulations of friends--and--er--courtesy due to
them--er--interfered with--though perhaps only heightened--by
procrastination--the pleasure of--ha!” And the Colonel completed his
sentence with a gallant wave of his fat but white and well-kept hand.

“Yes! I came to see you along o' that speech of yours. I was in court.
When I heard you gettin' it off on that jury, I says to myself, 'That's
the kind o' lawyer I want. A man that's flowery and convincin'! Just the
man to take up our case.”

“Ah! It's a matter of business, I see,” said the Colonel, inwardly
relieved, but externally careless. “And--er--may I ask the nature of the
case?”

“Well! it's a breach-o'-promise suit,” said the visitor calmly.

If the Colonel had been surprised before, he was now really startled,
and with an added horror that required all his politeness to conceal.
Breach-of-promise cases were his peculiar aversion. He had always held
them to be a kind of litigation which could have been obviated by the
prompt killing of the masculine offender--in which case he would have
gladly defended the killer. But a suit for damages,--DAMAGES!--with the
reading of love-letters before a hilarious jury and court, was against
all his instincts. His chivalry was outraged; his sense of humor was
small, and in the course of his career he had lost one or two important
cases through an unexpected development of this quality in a jury.

The woman had evidently noticed his hesitation, but mistook its cause.
“It ain't me--but my darter.”

The Colonel recovered his politeness. “Ah! I am relieved, my dear madam!
I could hardly conceive a man ignorant enough to--er--er--throw away
such evident good fortune--or base enough to deceive the trustfulness of
womanhood--matured and experienced only in the chivalry of our sex, ha!”

The woman smiled grimly. “Yes!--it's my darter, Zaidee Hooker--so ye
might spare some of them pretty speeches for HER--before the jury.”

The Colonel winced slightly before this doubtful prospect, but smiled.
“Ha! Yes!--certainly--the jury. But--er--my dear lady, need we go as
far as that? Can not this affair be settled--er--out of court? Could
not this--er--individual--be admonished--told that he must
give satisfaction--personal satisfaction--for his dastardly
conduct--to--er--near relative--or even valued personal friend?
The--er--arrangements necessary for that purpose I myself would
undertake.”

He was quite sincere; indeed, his small black eyes shone with that fire
which a pretty woman or an “affair of honor” could alone kindle. The
visitor stared vacantly at him, and said slowly, “And what good is that
goin' to do US?”

“Compel him to--er--perform his promise,” said the Colonel, leaning back
in his chair.

“Ketch him doin' it!” she exclaimed scornfully. “No--that ain't wot
we're after. We must make him PAY! Damages--and nothin' short o' THAT.”

The Colonel bit his lip. “I suppose,” he said gloomily, “you have
documentary evidence--written promises and protestations--er--er
love-letters, in fact?”

“No--nary a letter! Ye see, that's jest it--and that's where YOU come
in. You've got to convince that jury yourself. You've got to show what
it is--tell the whole story your own way. Lord! to a man like you that's
nothin'.”

Startling as this admission might have been to any other lawyer,
Starbottle was absolutely relieved by it. The absence of any
mirth-provoking correspondence, and the appeal solely to his own powers
of persuasion, actually struck his fancy. He lightly put aside the
compliment with a wave of his white hand.

“Of course,” he said confidently, “there is strongly presumptive and
corroborative evidence? Perhaps you can give me--er--a brief outline of
the affair?”

“Zaidee kin do that straight enough, I reckon,” said the woman; “what I
want to know first is, kin you take the case?”

The Colonel did not hesitate; his curiosity was piqued. “I certainly
can. I have no doubt your daughter will put me in possession of
sufficient facts and details--to constitute what we call--er--a brief.”

“She kin be brief enough--or long enough--for the matter of that,” said
the woman, rising. The Colonel accepted this implied witticism with a
smile.

“And when may I have the pleasure of seeing her?” he asked politely.

“Well, I reckon as soon as I can trot out and call her. She's just
outside, meanderin' in the road--kinder shy, ye know, at first.”

She walked to the door. The astounded Colonel nevertheless gallantly
accompanied her as she stepped out into the street and called shrilly,
“You Zaidee!”

A young girl here apparently detached herself from a tree and the
ostentatious perusal of an old election poster, and sauntered down
towards the office door. Like her mother, she was plainly dressed;
unlike her, she had a pale, rather refined face, with a demure mouth and
downcast eyes. This was all the Colonel saw as he bowed profoundly and
led the way into his office, for she accepted his salutations without
lifting her head. He helped her gallantly to a chair, on which she
seated herself sideways, somewhat ceremoniously, with her eyes following
the point of her parasol as she traced a pattern on the carpet. A second
chair offered to the mother that lady, however, declined. “I reckon to
leave you and Zaidee together to talk it out,” she said; turning to her
daughter, she added, “Jest you tell him all, Zaidee,” and before the
Colonel could rise again, disappeared from the room. In spite of his
professional experience, Starbottle was for a moment embarrassed. The
young girl, however, broke the silence without looking up.

“Adoniram K. Hotchkiss,” she began, in a monotonous voice, as if it were
a recitation addressed to the public, “first began to take notice of me
a year ago. Arter that--off and on”--

“One moment,” interrupted the astounded Colonel; “do you mean Hotchkiss
the President of the Ditch Company?” He had recognized the name of
a prominent citizen--a rigid, ascetic, taciturn, middle-aged man--a
deacon--and more than that, the head of the company he had just
defended. It seemed inconceivable.

“That's him,” she continued, with eyes still fixed on the parasol and
without changing her monotonous tone--“off and on ever since. Most
of the time at the Free-Will Baptist Church--at morning service,
prayer-meetings, and such. And at home--outside--er--in the road.”

“Is it this gentleman--Mr. Adoniram K. Hotchkiss--who--er--promised
marriage?” stammered the Colonel.

“Yes.”

The Colonel shifted uneasily in his chair. “Most extraordinary! for--you
see--my dear young lady--this becomes--a--er--most delicate affair.”

“That's what maw said,” returned the young woman simply, yet with the
faintest smile playing around her demure lips and downcast cheek.

“I mean,” said the Colonel, with a pained yet courteous smile, “that
this--er--gentleman--is in fact--er--one of my clients.”

“That's what maw said too, and of course your knowing him will make it
all the easier for you.”

A slight flush crossed the Colonel's cheek as he returned quickly and a
little stiffly, “On the contrary--er--it may make it impossible for me
to--er--act in this matter.”

The girl lifted her eyes. The Colonel held his breath as the long lashes
were raised to his level. Even to an ordinary observer that sudden
revelation of her eyes seemed to transform her face with subtle
witchery. They were large, brown, and soft, yet filled with an
extraordinary penetration and prescience. They were the eyes of an
experienced woman of thirty fixed in the face of a child. What else the
Colonel saw there Heaven only knows! He felt his inmost secrets
plucked from him--his whole soul laid bare--his vanity, belligerency,
gallantry--even his mediaeval chivalry, penetrated, and yet illuminated,
in that single glance. And when the eyelids fell again, he felt that a
greater part of himself had been swallowed up in them.

“I beg your pardon,” he said hurriedly. “I mean--this matter may
be arranged--er--amicably. My interest with--and as you wisely
say--my--er--knowledge of my client--er--Mr. Hotchkiss--may effect--a
compromise.”

“And DAMAGES,” said the young girl, readdressing her parasol, as if she
had never looked up.

The Colonel winced. “And--er--undoubtedly COMPENSATION--if you do not
press a fulfillment of the promise. Unless,” he said, with an attempted
return to his former easy gallantry, which, however, the recollection of
her eyes made difficult, “it is a question of--er--the affections.”

“Which?” asked his fair client softly.

“If you still love him?” explained the Colonel, actually blushing.

Zaidee again looked up; again taking the Colonel's breath away with eyes
that expressed not only the fullest perception of what he had SAID, but
of what he thought and had not said, and with an added subtle suggestion
of what he might have thought. “That's tellin',” she said, dropping her
long lashes again.

The Colonel laughed vacantly. Then feeling himself growing imbecile, he
forced an equally weak gravity. “Pardon me--I understand there are no
letters; may I know the way in which he formulated his declaration and
promises?”

“Hymn-books.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the mystified lawyer.

“Hymn-books--marked words in them with pencil--and passed 'em on to
me,” repeated Zaidee. “Like 'love,' 'dear,' 'precious,' 'sweet,' and
'blessed,'” she added, accenting each word with a push of her parasol on
the carpet. “Sometimes a whole line outer Tate and Brady--and Solomon's
Song, you know, and sich.”

“I believe,” said the Colonel loftily, “that the--er--phrases of sacred
psalmody lend themselves to the language of the affections. But in
regard to the distinct promise of marriage--was there--er--no OTHER
expression?”

“Marriage Service in the prayer-book--lines and words outer that--all
marked,” Zaidee replied.

The Colonel nodded naturally and approvingly. “Very good. Were others
cognizant of this? Were there any witnesses?”

“Of course not,” said the girl. “Only me and him. It was generally at
church-time--or prayer-meeting. Once, in passing the plate, he slipped
one o' them peppermint lozenges with the letters stamped on it 'I love
you' for me to take.”

The Colonel coughed slightly. “And you have the lozenge?”

“I ate it.”

“Ah,” said the Colonel. After a pause he added delicately, “But were
these attentions--er--confined to--er--sacred precincts? Did he meet you
elsewhere?”

“Useter pass our house on the road,” returned the girl, dropping into
her monotonous recital, “and useter signal.”

“Ah, signal?” repeated the Colonel approvingly.

“Yes! He'd say 'Keerow,' and I'd say 'Keeree.' Suthing like a bird, you
know.”

Indeed, as she lifted her voice in imitation of the call, the Colonel
thought it certainly very sweet and birdlike. At least as SHE gave
it. With his remembrance of the grim deacon he had doubts as to the
melodiousness of HIS utterance. He gravely made her repeat it.

“And after that signal?” he added suggestively.

“He'd pass on.”

The Colonel again coughed slightly, and tapped his desk with his
penholder.

“Were there any endearments--er--caresses--er--such as taking your
hand--er--clasping your waist?” he suggested, with a gallant yet
respectful sweep of his white hand and bowing of his head; “er--slight
pressure of your fingers in the changes of a dance--I mean,” he
corrected himself, with an apologetic cough--“in the passing of the
plate?”

“No; he was not what you'd call 'fond,'” returned the girl.

“Ah! Adoniram K. Hotchkiss was not 'fond' in the ordinary acceptance of
the word,” noted the Colonel, with professional gravity.

She lifted her disturbing eyes, and again absorbed his in her own. She
also said “Yes,” although her eyes in their mysterious prescience of all
he was thinking disclaimed the necessity of any answer at all. He smiled
vacantly. There was a long pause. On which she slowly disengaged her
parasol from the carpet pattern, and stood up.

“I reckon that's about all,” she said.

“Er--yes--but one moment,” began the Colonel vaguely. He would have
liked to keep her longer, but with her strange premonition of him he
felt powerless to detain her, or explain his reason for doing so. He
instinctively knew she had told him all; his professional judgment told
him that a more hopeless case had never come to his knowledge. Yet he
was not daunted, only embarrassed. “No matter,” he said. “Of course I
shall have to consult with you again.”

Her eyes again answered that she expected he would, and she added
simply, “When?”

“In the course of a day or two;” he replied quickly. “I will send you
word.”

She turned to go. In his eagerness to open the door for her, he upset
his chair, and with some confusion, that was actually youthful, he
almost impeded her movements in the hall, and knocked his broad-brimmed
Panama hat from his bowing hand in a final gallant sweep. Yet as her
small, trim, youthful figure, with its simple Leghorn straw hat confined
by a blue bow under her round chin, passed away before him, she looked
more like a child than ever.

The Colonel spent that afternoon in making diplomatic inquiries. He
found his youthful client was the daughter of a widow who had a small
ranch on the cross-roads, near the new Free-Will Baptist Church--the
evident theatre of this pastoral. They led a secluded life, the
girl being little known in the town, and her beauty and fascination
apparently not yet being a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a
pleasurable relief at this, and a general satisfaction he could not
account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed
his own impressions of the alleged lover,--a serious-minded, practically
abstracted man, abstentive of youthful society, and the last man
apparently capable of levity of the affections or serious flirtation.
The Colonel was mystified, but determined of purpose, whatever that
purpose might have been.

The next day he was at his office at the same hour. He was alone--as
usual--the Colonel's office being really his private lodgings, disposed
in connecting rooms, a single apartment reserved for consultation.
He had no clerk, his papers and briefs being taken by his faithful
body-servant and ex-slave “Jim” to another firm who did his office work
since the death of Major Stryker, the Colonel's only law partner, who
fell in a duel some years previous. With a fine constancy the Colonel
still retained his partner's name on his doorplate, and, it was alleged
by the superstitious, kept a certain invincibility also through the
'manes' of that lamented and somewhat feared man.

The Colonel consulted his watch, whose heavy gold case still showed
the marks of a providential interference with a bullet destined for its
owner, and replaced it with some difficulty and shortness of breath in
his fob. At the same moment he heard a step in the passage, and the door
opened to Adoniram K. Hotchkiss. The Colonel was impressed; he had a
duelist's respect for punctuality.

The man entered with a nod and the expectant inquiring look of a busy
man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all
courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his
half reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle
of whiskey and two glasses.

“A--er--slight refreshment, Mr. Hotchkiss,” he suggested politely.

“I never drink,” replied Hotchkiss, with the severe attitude of a total
abstainer.

“Ah--er--not the finest Bourbon whiskey, selected by a Kentucky friend?
No? Pardon me! A cigar, then--the mildest Havana.”

“I do not use tobacco nor alcohol in any form,” repeated Hotchkiss
ascetically. “I have no foolish weaknesses.”

The Colonel's moist, beady eyes swept silently over his client's sallow
face. He leaned back comfortably in his chair, and half closing his
eyes as in dreamy reminiscence, said slowly: “Your reply, Mr. Hotchkiss,
reminds me of--er--sing'lar circumstance that--er--occurred, in point of
fact--at the St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans. Pinkey Hornblower--personal
friend--invited Senator Doolittle to join him in social glass. Received,
sing'larly enough, reply similar to yours. 'Don't drink nor smoke?' said
Pinkey. 'Gad, sir, you must be mighty sweet on the ladies.' Ha!”
 The Colonel paused long enough to allow the faint flush to pass from
Hotchkiss's cheek, and went on, half closing his eyes: “'I allow no man,
sir, to discuss my personal habits,' declared Doolittle, over his shirt
collar. 'Then I reckon shootin' must be one of those habits,' said
Pinkey coolly. Both men drove out on the Shell Road back of cemetery
next morning. Pinkey put bullet at twelve paces through Doolittle's
temple. Poor Doo never spoke again. Left three wives and seven children,
they say--two of 'em black.”

“I got a note from you this morning,” said Hotchkiss, with badly
concealed impatience. “I suppose in reference to our case. You have
taken judgment, I believe.”

The Colonel, without replying, slowly filled a glass of whiskey and
water. For a moment he held it dreamily before him, as if still engaged
in gentle reminiscences called up by the act. Then tossing it off,
he wiped his lips with a large white handkerchief, and leaning back
comfortably in his chair, said, with a wave of his hand, “The interview
I requested, Mr. Hotchkiss, concerns a subject--which I may say
is--er--er--at present NOT of a public or business nature--although
LATER it might become--er--er--both. It is an affair of
some--er--delicacy.”

The Colonel paused, and Mr. Hotchkiss regarded him with increased
impatience. The Colonel, however, continued, with unchanged
deliberation: “It concerns--er--er--a young lady--a beautiful,
high-souled creature, sir, who, apart from her personal
loveliness--er--er--I may say is of one of the first families of
Missouri, and--er--not remotely connected by marriage with one
of--er--er--my boyhood's dearest friends.” The latter, I grieve to say,
was a pure invention of the Colonel's--an oratorical addition to the
scanty information he had obtained the previous day. “The young lady,”
 he continued blandly, “enjoys the further distinction of being
the object of such attention from you as would make this
interview--really--a confidential matter--er--er among friends
and--er--er--relations in present and future. I need not say that the
lady I refer to is Miss Zaidee Juno Hooker, only daughter of Almira
Ann Hooker, relict of Jefferson Brown Hooker, formerly of Boone County,
Kentucky, and latterly of--er--Pike County, Missouri.”

The sallow, ascetic hue of Mr. Hotchkiss's face had passed through a
livid and then a greenish shade, and finally settled into a sullen red.
“What's all this about?” he demanded roughly.

The least touch of belligerent fire came into Starbottle's eye, but his
bland courtesy did not change. “I believe,” he said politely, “I have
made myself clear as between--er--gentlemen, though perhaps not as clear
as I should to--er--er--jury.”

Mr. Hotchkiss was apparently struck with some significance in the
lawyer's reply. “I don't know,” he said, in a lower and more cautious
voice, “what you mean by what you call 'my attentions' to--any one--or
how it concerns you. I have not exchanged half a dozen words with--the
person you name--have never written her a line--nor even called at her
house.”

He rose with an assumption of ease, pulled down his waistcoat, buttoned
his coat, and took up his hat. The Colonel did not move.

“I believe I have already indicated my meaning in what I have called
'your attentions,'” said the Colonel blandly, “and given you my
'concern' for speaking as--er--er--mutual friend. As to YOUR statement
of your relations with Miss Hooker, I may state that it is fully
corroborated by the statement of the young lady herself in this very
office yesterday.”

“Then what does this impertinent nonsense mean? Why am I summoned here?”
 demanded Hotchkiss furiously.

“Because,” said the Colonel deliberately, “that statement is
infamously--yes, damnably to your discredit, sir!”

Mr. Hotchkiss was here seized by one of those impotent and inconsistent
rages which occasionally betray the habitually cautious and timid man.
He caught up the Colonel's stick, which was lying on the table. At the
same moment the Colonel, without any apparent effort, grasped it by
the handle. To Mr. Hotchkiss's astonishment, the stick separated in two
pieces, leaving the handle and about two feet of narrow glittering steel
in the Colonel's hand. The man recoiled, dropping the useless fragment.
The Colonel picked it up, fitted the shining blade in it, clicked the
spring, and then rising with a face of courtesy yet of unmistakably
genuine pain, and with even a slight tremor in his voice, said
gravely,--

“Mr. Hotchkiss, I owe you a thousand apologies, sir, that--er--a weapon
should be drawn by me--even through your own inadvertence--under the
sacred protection of my roof, and upon an unarmed man. I beg your
pardon, sir, and I even withdraw the expressions which provoked
that inadvertence. Nor does this apology prevent you from holding me
responsible--personally responsible--ELSEWHERE for an indiscretion
committed in behalf of a lady--my--er--client.”

“Your client? Do you mean you have taken her case? You, the counsel for
the Ditch Company?” asked Mr. Hotchkiss, in trembling indignation.

“Having won YOUR case, sir,” replied the Colonel coolly,
“the--er--usages of advocacy do not prevent me from espousing the cause
of the weak and unprotected.”

“We shall see, sir,” said Hotchkiss, grasping the handle of the door and
backing into the passage. “There are other lawyers who”--

“Permit me to see you out,” interrupted the Colonel, rising politely.

--“will be ready to resist the attacks of blackmail,” continued
Hotchkiss, retreating along the passage.

“And then you will be able to repeat your remarks to me IN THE STREET,”
 continued the Colonel, bowing, as he persisted in following his visitor
to the door.

But here Mr. Hotchkiss quickly slammed it behind him, and hurried away.
The Colonel returned to his office, and sitting down, took a sheet of
letter-paper bearing the inscription “Starbottle and Stryker, Attorneys
and Counselors,” and wrote the following lines:--


HOOKER versus HOTCHKISS.

DEAR MADAM,--Having had a visit from the defendant in above, we should
be pleased to have an interview with you at two P. M. to-morrow.

Your obedient servants,

STARBOTTLE AND STRYKER.


This he sealed and dispatched by his trusted servant Jim, and then
devoted a few moments to reflection. It was the custom of the Colonel to
act first, and justify the action by reason afterwards.

He knew that Hotchkiss would at once lay the matter before rival
counsel. He knew that they would advise him that Miss Hooker had “no
case”--that she would be nonsuited on her own evidence, and he ought not
to compromise, but be ready to stand trial. He believed, however, that
Hotchkiss feared such exposure, and although his own instincts had been
at first against this remedy, he was now instinctively in favor of it.
He remembered his own power with a jury; his vanity and his chivalry
alike approved of this heroic method; he was bound by no prosaic
facts--he had his own theory of the case, which no mere evidence could
gainsay. In fact, Mrs. Hooker's admission that he was to “tell the story
in his own way” actually appeared to him an inspiration and a prophecy.

Perhaps there was something else, due possibly to the lady's wonderful
eyes, of which he had thought much. Yet it was not her simplicity that
affected him solely; on the contrary, it was her apparent intelligent
reading of the character of her recreant lover--and of his own! Of all
the Colonel's previous “light” or “serious” loves, none had ever before
flattered him in that way. And it was this, combined with the respect
which he had held for their professional relations, that precluded
his having a more familiar knowledge of his client, through serious
questioning or playful gallantry. I am not sure it was not part of the
charm to have a rustic femme incomprise as a client.

Nothing could exceed the respect with which he greeted her as she
entered his office the next day. He even affected not to notice that she
had put on her best clothes, and he made no doubt appeared as when
she had first attracted the mature yet faithless attentions of Deacon
Hotchkiss at church. A white virginal muslin was belted around her slim
figure by a blue ribbon, and her Leghorn hat was drawn around her oval
cheek by a bow of the same color. She had a Southern girl's narrow feet,
encased in white stockings and kid slippers, which were crossed primly
before her as she sat in a chair, supporting her arm by her faithful
parasol planted firmly on the floor. A faint odor of southernwood
exhaled from her, and, oddly enough, stirred the Colonel with a far-off
recollection of a pine-shaded Sunday-school on a Georgia hillside, and
of his first love, aged ten, in a short starched frock. Possibly it was
the same recollection that revived something of the awkwardness he had
felt then.

He, however, smiled vaguely, and sitting down, coughed slightly, and
placed his finger-tips together. “I have had an--er--interview with
Mr. Hotchkiss, but--I--er--regret to say there seems to be no prospect
of--er--compromise.”

He paused, and to his surprise her listless “company” face lit up with
an adorable smile. “Of course!--ketch him!” she said. “Was he mad when
you told him?” She put her knees comfortably together and leaned forward
for a reply.

For all that, wild horses could not have torn from the Colonel a word
about Hotchkiss's anger. “He expressed his intention of employing
counsel--and defending a suit,” returned the Colonel, affably basking in
her smile.

She dragged her chair nearer his desk. “Then you'll fight him tooth and
nail?” she asked eagerly; “you'll show him up? You'll tell the whole
story your own way? You'll give him fits?--and you'll make him pay?
Sure?” she went on breathlessly.

“I--er--will,” said the Colonel, almost as breathlessly.

She caught his fat white hand, which was lying on the table, between
her own and lifted it to her lips. He felt her soft young fingers even
through the lisle-thread gloves that encased them, and the warm moisture
of her lips upon his skin. He felt himself flushing--but was unable
to break the silence or change his position. The next moment she had
scuttled back with her chair to her old position.

“I--er--certainly shall do my best,” stammered the Colonel, in an
attempt to recover his dignity and composure.

“That's enough! You'll do it,” said she enthusiastically. “Lordy! Just
you talk for ME as ye did for HIS old Ditch Company, and you'll fetch
it--every time! Why, when you made that jury sit up the other day--when
you got that off about the Merrikan flag waving equally over the rights
of honest citizens banded together in peaceful commercial pursuits, as
well as over the fortress of official proflig--”

“Oligarchy,” murmured the Colonel courteously.

--“oligarchy,” repeated the girl quickly, “my breath was just took away.
I said to maw, 'Ain't he too sweet for anything!' I did, honest Injin!
And when you rolled it all off at the end--never missing a word (you
didn't need to mark 'em in a lesson-book, but had 'em all ready on your
tongue)--and walked out--Well! I didn't know you nor the Ditch Company
from Adam, but I could have just run over and kissed you there before
the whole court!”

She laughed, with her face glowing, although her strange eyes were cast
down. Alack! the Colonel's face was equally flushed, and his own beady
eyes were on his desk. To any other woman he would have voiced the banal
gallantry that he should now, himself, look forward to that reward, but
the words never reached his lips. He laughed, coughed slightly, and when
he looked up again she had fallen into the same attitude as on her first
visit, with her parasol point on the floor.

“I must ask you to--er--direct your memory to--er--another point: the
breaking off of the--er--er--er--engagement. Did he--er--give any reason
for it? Or show any cause?”

“No; he never said anything,” returned the girl.

“Not in his usual way?--er--no reproaches out of the hymn-book?--or the
sacred writings?”

“No; he just QUIT.”

“Er--ceased his attentions,” said the Colonel gravely. “And naturally
you--er--were not conscious of any cause for his doing so.”

The girl raised her wonderful eyes so suddenly and so penetratingly
without replying in any other way that the Colonel could only hurriedly
say: “I see! None, of course!”

At which she rose, the Colonel rising also. “We--shall begin proceedings
at once. I must, however, caution you to answer no questions, nor say
anything about this case to any one until you are in court.”

She answered his request with another intelligent look and a nod. He
accompanied her to the door. As he took her proffered hand, he raised
the lisle-thread fingers to his lips with old-fashioned gallantry. As if
that act had condoned for his first omissions and awkwardness, he became
his old-fashioned self again, buttoned his coat, pulled out his shirt
frill, and strutted back to his desk.

A day or two later it was known throughout the town that Zaidee Hooker
had sued Adoniram Hotchkiss for breach of promise, and that the damages
were laid at five thousand dollars. As in those bucolic days the Western
press was under the secure censorship of a revolver, a cautious tone of
criticism prevailed, and any gossip was confined to personal expression,
and even then at the risk of the gossiper. Nevertheless, the situation
provoked the intensest curiosity. The Colonel was approached--until
his statement that he should consider any attempt to overcome his
professional secrecy a personal reflection withheld further advances.
The community were left to the more ostentatious information of the
defendant's counsel, Messrs. Kitcham and Bilser, that the case was
“ridiculous” and “rotten,” that the plaintiff would be nonsuited, and
the fire-eating Starbottle would be taught a lesson that he could not
“bully” the law, and there were some dark hints of a conspiracy. It was
even hinted that the “case” was the revengeful and preposterous outcome
of the refusal of Hotchkiss to pay Starbottle an extravagant fee for his
late services to the Ditch Company. It is unnecessary to say that these
words were not reported to the Colonel. It was, however, an unfortunate
circumstance for the calmer, ethical consideration of the subject that
the Church sided with Hotchkiss, as this provoked an equal adherence
to the plaintiff and Starbottle on the part of the larger body of
non-churchgoers, who were delighted at a possible exposure of the
weakness of religious rectitude. “I've allus had my suspicions o' them
early candle-light meetings down at that gospel shop,” said one critic,
“and I reckon Deacon Hotchkiss didn't rope in the gals to attend jest
for psalm-singing.” “Then for him to get up and leave the board afore
the game's finished and try to sneak out of it,” said an other,--“I
suppose that's what they call RELIGIOUS.”

It was therefore not remarkable that the court-house three weeks later
was crowded with an excited multitude of the curious and sympathizing.
The fair plaintiff, with her mother, was early in attendance, and under
the Colonel's advice appeared in the same modest garb in which she had
first visited his office. This and her downcast, modest demeanor were
perhaps at first disappointing to the crowd, who had evidently expected
a paragon of loveliness in this Circe of that grim, ascetic defendant,
who sat beside his counsel. But presently all eyes were fixed on the
Colonel, who certainly made up in his appearance any deficiency of his
fair client. His portly figure was clothed in a blue dress coat with
brass buttons, a buff waistcoat which permitted his frilled shirt-front
to become erectile above it, a black satin stock which confined a boyish
turned-down collar around his full neck, and immaculate drill trousers,
strapped over varnished boots. A murmur ran round the court. “Old
'Personally Responsible' has got his war-paint on;” “The Old War-Horse
is smelling powder,” were whispered comments. Yet for all that, the
most irreverent among them recognized vaguely, in this bizarre figure,
something of an honored past in their country's history, and possibly
felt the spell of old deeds and old names that had once thrilled their
boyish pulses. The new District Judge returned Colonel Starbottle's
profoundly punctilious bow. The Colonel was followed by his negro
servant, carrying a parcel of hymn-books and Bibles, who, with a
courtesy evidently imitated from his master, placed one before the
opposite counsel. This, after a first curious glance, the lawyer
somewhat superciliously tossed aside. But when Jim, proceeding to the
jury-box, placed with equal politeness the remaining copies before the
jury, the opposite counsel sprang to his feet.

“I want to direct the attention of the Court to this unprecedented
tampering with the jury, by this gratuitous exhibition of matter
impertinent and irrelevant to the issue.”

The Judge cast an inquiring look at Colonel Starbottle.

“May it please the Court,” returned Colonel Starbottle with dignity,
ignoring the counsel, “the defendant's counsel will observe that he
is already furnished with the matter--which I regret to say he has
treated--in the presence of the Court--and of his client, a deacon of
the church--with--er--great superciliousness. When I state to your
Honor that the books in question are hymn-books and copies of the Holy
Scriptures, and that they are for the instruction of the jury, to whom
I shall have to refer them in the course of my opening, I believe I am
within my rights.”

“The act is certainly unprecedented,” said the Judge dryly, “but unless
the counsel for the plaintiff expects the jury to SING from these
hymn-books, their introduction is not improper, and I cannot admit the
objection. As defendant's counsel are furnished with copies also, they
cannot plead 'surprise,' as in the introduction of new matter, and as
plaintiff's counsel relies evidently upon the jury's attention to his
opening, he would not be the first person to distract it.” After a pause
he added, addressing the Colonel, who remained standing, “The Court is
with you, sir; proceed.”

But the Colonel remained motionless and statuesque, with folded arms.

“I have overruled the objection,” repeated the Judge; “you may go on.”

“I am waiting, your Honor, for the--er--withdrawal by the defendant's
counsel of the word 'tampering,' as refers to myself, and of
'impertinent,' as refers to the sacred volumes.”

“The request is a proper one, and I have no doubt will be acceded to,”
 returned the Judge quietly. The defendant's counsel rose and mumbled
a few words of apology, and the incident closed. There was, however, a
general feeling that the Colonel had in some way “scored,” and if his
object had been to excite the greatest curiosity about the books, he had
made his point.

But impassive of his victory, he inflated his chest, with his right hand
in the breast of his buttoned coat, and began. His usual high color had
paled slightly, but the small pupils of his prominent eyes glittered
like steel. The young girl leaned forward in her chair with an attention
so breathless, a sympathy so quick, and an admiration so artless
and unconscious that in an instant she divided with the speaker the
attention of the whole assemblage. It was very hot; the court was
crowded to suffocation; even the open windows revealed a crowd of faces
outside the building, eagerly following the Colonel's words.

He would remind the jury that only a few weeks ago he stood there as
the advocate of a powerful Company, then represented by the present
defendant. He spoke then as the champion of strict justice against
legal oppression; no less should he to-day champion the cause of the
unprotected and the comparatively defenseless--save for that paramount
power which surrounds beauty and innocence--even though the plaintiff
of yesterday was the defendant of to-day. As he approached the court a
moment ago he had raised his eyes and beheld the starry flag flying from
its dome, and he knew that glorious banner was a symbol of the perfect
equality, under the Constitution, of the rich and the poor, the strong
and the weak--an equality which made the simple citizen taken from the
plough in the field, the pick in the gulch, or from behind the counter
in the mining town, who served on that jury, the equal arbiters of
justice with that highest legal luminary whom they were proud to welcome
on the bench to-day. The Colonel paused, with a stately bow to the
impassive Judge. It was this, he continued, which lifted his heart as
he approached the building. And yet--he had entered it with an
uncertain--he might almost say--a timid step. And why? He knew,
gentlemen, he was about to confront a profound--aye! a sacred
responsibility! Those hymn-books and holy writings handed to the jury
were NOT, as his Honor had surmised, for the purpose of enabling the
jury to indulge in--er--preliminary choral exercise! He might, indeed,
say, “Alas, not!” They were the damning, incontrovertible proofs of the
perfidy of the defendant. And they would prove as terrible a warning to
him as the fatal characters upon Belshazzar's wall. There was a strong
sensation. Hotchkiss turned a sallow green. His lawyers assumed a
careless smile.

It was his duty to tell them that this was not one of those ordinary
“breach-of-promise” cases which were too often the occasion of ruthless
mirth and indecent levity in the court-room. The jury would find
nothing of that here. There were no love-letters with the epithets of
endearment, nor those mystic crosses and ciphers which, he had been
credibly informed, chastely hid the exchange of those mutual caresses
known as “kisses.” There was no cruel tearing of the veil from those
sacred privacies of the human affection; there was no forensic shouting
out of those fond confidences meant only for ONE. But there was, he was
shocked to say, a new sacrilegious intrusion. The weak pipings of Cupid
were mingled with the chorus of the saints,--the sanctity of the temple
known as the “meeting--house” was desecrated by proceedings more in
keeping with the shrine of Venus; and the inspired writings themselves
were used as the medium of amatory and wanton flirtation by the
defendant in his sacred capacity as deacon.

The Colonel artistically paused after this thunderous denunciation. The
jury turned eagerly to the leaves of the hymn-books, but the larger gaze
of the audience remained fixed upon the speaker and the girl, who sat in
rapt admiration of his periods. After the hush, the Colonel continued
in a lower and sadder voice: “There are, perhaps, few of us here,
gentlemen,--with the exception of the defendant,--who can arrogate to
themselves the title of regular church-goers, or to whom these humbler
functions of the prayer-meeting, the Sunday-school, and the Bible-class
are habitually familiar. Yet”--more solemnly--“down in our hearts is the
deep conviction of our shortcomings and failings, and a laudable desire
that others, at least, should profit by the teachings we neglect.
Perhaps,” he continued, closing his eyes dreamily, “there is not a
man here who does not recall the happy days of his boyhood, the rustic
village spire, the lessons shared with some artless village maiden, with
whom he later sauntered, hand in hand, through the woods, as the simple
rhyme rose upon their lips,--

     'Always make it a point to have it a rule,
     Never to be late at the Sabbath-school.'

“He would recall the strawberry feasts, the welcome annual picnic,
redolent with hunks of gingerbread and sarsaparilla. How would they feel
to know that these sacred recollections were now forever profaned in
their memory by the knowledge that the defendant was capable of using
such occasions to make love to the larger girls and teachers, whilst
his artless companions were innocently--the Court will pardon me for
introducing what I am credibly informed is the local expression--'doing
gooseberry'?” The tremulous flicker of a smile passed over the faces of
the listening crowd, and the Colonel slightly winced. But he recovered
himself instantly, and continued,--

“My client, the only daughter of a widowed mother--who has for years
stemmed the varying tides of adversity, in the western precincts of this
town--stands before you to-day invested only in her own innocence. She
wears no--er--rich gifts of her faithless admirer--is panoplied in no
jewels, rings, nor mementos of affection such as lovers delight to hang
upon the shrine of their affections; hers is not the glory with which
Solomon decorated the Queen of Sheba, though the defendant, as I shall
show later, clothed her in the less expensive flowers of the king's
poetry. No, gentlemen! The defendant exhibited in this affair a certain
frugality of--er--pecuniary investment, which I am willing to admit may
be commendable in his class. His only gift was characteristic alike
of his methods and his economy. There is, I understand, a certain
not unimportant feature of religious exercise known as 'taking a
collection.' The defendant, on this occasion, by the mute presentation
of a tin plate covered with baize, solicited the pecuniary contributions
of the faithful. On approaching the plaintiff, however, he himself
slipped a love-token upon the plate and pushed it towards her. That
love-token was a lozenge--a small disk, I have reason to believe,
concocted of peppermint and sugar, bearing upon its reverse surface the
simple words, 'I love you!' I have since ascertained that these disks
may be bought for five cents a dozen--or at considerably less than one
half cent for the single lozenge. Yes, gentlemen, the words 'I love
you!'--the oldest legend of all; the refrain 'when the morning
stars sang together'--were presented to the plaintiff by a medium so
insignificant that there is, happily, no coin in the republic low enough
to represent its value.

“I shall prove to you, gentlemen of the jury,” said the Colonel
solemnly, drawing a Bible from his coat-tail pocket, “that the defendant
for the last twelve months conducted an amatory correspondence with
the plaintiff by means of underlined words of Sacred Writ and church
psalmody, such as 'beloved,' 'precious,' and 'dearest,' occasionally
appropriating whole passages which seemed apposite to his tender
passion. I shall call your attention to one of them. The defendant,
while professing to be a total abstainer,--a man who, in my own
knowledge, has refused spirituous refreshment as an inordinate weakness
of the flesh,--with shameless hypocrisy underscores with his pencil the
following passage, and presents it to the plaintiff. The gentlemen of
the jury will find it in the Song of Solomon, page 548, chapter ii.
verse 5.” After a pause, in which the rapid rustling of leaves was heard
in the jury-box, Colonel Starbottle declaimed in a pleading, stentorian
voice, “'Stay me with--er--FLAGONS, comfort me with--er--apples--for
I am--er--sick of love.' Yes, gentlemen!--yes, you may well turn
from those accusing pages and look at the double-faced defendant. He
desires--to--er--be--'stayed with flagons'! I am not aware at present
what kind of liquor is habitually dispensed at these meetings, and for
which the defendant so urgently clamored; but it will be my duty, before
this trial is over, to discover it, if I have to summon every barkeeper
in this district. For the moment I will simply call your attention to
the QUANTITY. It is not a single drink that the defendant asks for--not
a glass of light and generous wine, to be shared with his inamorata,
but a number of flagons or vessels, each possibly holding a pint
measure--FOR HIMSELF!”

The smile of the audience had become a laugh. The Judge looked up
warningly, when his eye caught the fact that the Colonel had again
winced at this mirth. He regarded him seriously. Mr. Hotchkiss's counsel
had joined in the laugh affectedly, but Hotchkiss himself sat ashy pale.
There was also a commotion in the jury-box, a hurried turning over of
leaves, and an excited discussion.

“The gentlemen of the jury,” said the Judge, with official gravity,
“will please keep order and attend only to the speeches of counsel. Any
discussion HERE is irregular and premature, and must be reserved for the
jury-room after they have retired.”

The foreman of the jury struggled to his feet. He was a powerful man,
with a good-humored face, and, in spite of his unfelicitous nickname of
“The Bone-Breaker,” had a kindly, simple, but somewhat emotional nature.
Nevertheless, it appeared as if he were laboring under some powerful
indignation.

“Can we ask a question, Judge?” he said respectfully, although his voice
had the unmistakable Western American ring in it, as of one who was
unconscious that he could be addressing any but his peers.

“Yes,” said the Judge good-humoredly.

“We're finding in this yere piece, out o' which the Kernel hes just bin
a-quotin', some language that me and my pardners allow hadn't orter be
read out afore a young lady in court, and we want to know of you--ez a
fa'r-minded and impartial man--ef this is the reg'lar kind o' book given
to gals and babies down at the meetin'-house.”

“The jury will please follow the counsel's speech without comment,” said
the Judge briefly, fully aware that the defendant's counsel would spring
to his feet, as he did promptly.

“The Court will allow us to explain to the gentlemen that the language
they seem to object to has been accepted by the best theologians for
the last thousand years as being purely mystic. As I will explain later,
those are merely symbols of the Church”--

“Of wot?” interrupted the foreman, in deep scorn.

“Of the Church!”

“We ain't askin' any questions o' YOU, and we ain't takin' any answers,”
 said the foreman, sitting down abruptly.

“I must insist,” said the Judge sternly, “that the plaintiff's counsel
be allowed to continue his opening without interruption. You” (to
defendant's counsel) “will have your opportunity to reply later.”

The counsel sank down in his seat with the bitter conviction that the
jury was manifestly against him, and the case as good as lost. But his
face was scarcely as disturbed as his client's, who, in great agitation,
had begun to argue with him wildly, and was apparently pressing some
point against the lawyer's vehement opposal. The Colonel's murky eyes
brightened as he still stood erect, with his hand thrust in his breast.

“It will be put to you, gentlemen, when the counsel on the other side
refrains from mere interruption and confines himself to reply, that my
unfortunate client has no action--no remedy at law--because there were
no spoken words of endearment. But, gentlemen, it will depend upon YOU
to say what are and what are not articulate expressions of love. We all
know that among the lower animals, with whom you may possibly be called
upon to classify the defendant, there are certain signals more or less
harmonious, as the case may be. The ass brays, the horse neighs, the
sheep bleats--the feathered denizens of the grove call to their mates
in more musical roundelays. These are recognized facts, gentlemen, which
you yourselves, as dwellers among nature in this beautiful land, are all
cognizant of. They are facts that no one would deny--and we should have
a poor opinion of the ass who, at--er--such a supreme moment,
would attempt to suggest that his call was unthinking and without
significance. But, gentlemen, I shall prove to you that such was the
foolish, self-convicting custom of the defendant. With the greatest
reluctance, and the--er--greatest pain, I succeeded in wresting from
the maidenly modesty of my fair client the innocent confession that
the defendant had induced her to correspond with him in these methods.
Picture to yourself, gentlemen, the lonely moonlight road beside the
widow's humble cottage. It is a beautiful night, sanctified to the
affections, and the innocent girl is leaning from her casement.
Presently there appears upon the road a slinking, stealthy figure, the
defendant on his way to church. True to the instruction she has received
from him, her lips part in the musical utterance” (the Colonel lowered
his voice in a faint falsetto, presumably in fond imitation of his
fair client), “'Keeree!' Instantly the night becomes resonant with the
impassioned reply” (the Colonel here lifted his voice in stentorian
tones), “'Kee-row.' Again, as he passes, rises the soft 'Keeree;' again,
as his form is lost in the distance, comes back the deep 'Keerow.'”

A burst of laughter, long, loud, and irrepressible, struck the whole
court-room, and before the Judge could lift his half-composed face
and take his handkerchief from his mouth, a faint “Keeree” from some
unrecognized obscurity of the court-room was followed by a loud “Keerow”
 from some opposite locality. “The Sheriff will clear the court,” said
the Judge sternly; but, alas! as the embarrassed and choking officials
rushed hither and thither, a soft “Keeree” from the spectators at
the window, OUTSIDE the court-house, was answered by a loud chorus of
“Keerows” from the opposite windows, filled with onlookers. Again
the laughter arose everywhere,--even the fair plaintiff herself sat
convulsed behind her handkerchief.

The figure of Colonel Starbottle alone remained erect--white and rigid.
And then the Judge, looking up, saw--what no one else in the court had
seen--that the Colonel was sincere and in earnest; that what he had
conceived to be the pleader's most perfect acting and most elaborate
irony were the deep, serious, mirthless CONVICTIONS of a man without the
least sense of humor. There was the respect of this conviction in
the Judge's voice as he said to him gently, “You may proceed, Colonel
Starbottle.”

“I thank your Honor,” said the Colonel slowly, “for recognizing and
doing all in your power to prevent an interruption that, during my
thirty years' experience at the bar, I have never been subjected
to without the privilege of holding the instigators thereof
responsible--PERSONALLY responsible. It is possibly my fault that I have
failed, oratorically, to convey to the gentlemen of the jury the full
force and significance of the defendant's signals. I am aware that my
voice is singularly deficient in producing either the dulcet tones of my
fair client or the impassioned vehemence of the defendant's response.
I will,” continued the Colonel, with a fatigued but blind fatuity that
ignored the hurriedly knit brows and warning eyes of the Judge, “try
again. The note uttered by my client” (lowering his voice to the
faintest of falsettos) “was 'Keeree;' the response was 'Keerow-ow.'” And
the Colonel's voice fairly shook the dome above him.

Another uproar of laughter followed this apparently audacious
repetition, but was interrupted by an unlooked-for incident. The
defendant rose abruptly, and tearing himself away from the withholding
hand and pleading protestations of his counsel, absolutely fled from
the court-room, his appearance outside being recognized by a prolonged
“Keerow” from the bystanders, which again and again followed him in the
distance.

In the momentary silence which followed, the Colonel's voice was heard
saying, “We rest here, your Honor,” and he sat down. No less white, but
more agitated, was the face of the defendant's counsel, who instantly
rose.

“For some unexplained reason, your Honor, my client desires to suspend
further proceedings, with a view to effect a peaceable compromise with
the plaintiff. As he is a man of wealth and position, he is able and
willing to pay liberally for that privilege. While I, as his counsel, am
still convinced of his legal irresponsibility, as he has chosen publicly
to abandon his rights here, I can only ask your Honor's permission to
suspend further proceedings until I can confer with Colonel Starbottle.”

“As far as I can follow the pleadings,” said the Judge gravely, “the
case seems to be hardly one for litigation, and I approve of the
defendant's course, while I strongly urge the plaintiff to accept it.”

Colonel Starbottle bent over his fair client. Presently he rose,
unchanged in look or demeanor. “I yield, your Honor, to the wishes of my
client, and--er--lady. We accept.”

Before the court adjourned that day it was known throughout the town
that Adoniram K. Hotchkiss had compromised the suit for four thousand
dollars and costs.

Colonel Starbottle had so far recovered his equanimity as to strut
jauntily towards his office, where he was to meet his fair client. He
was surprised, however, to find her already there, and in company with a
somewhat sheepish-looking young man--a stranger. If the Colonel had
any disappointment in meeting a third party to the interview, his
old-fashioned courtesy did not permit him to show it. He bowed
graciously, and politely motioned them each to a seat.

“I reckoned I'd bring Hiram round with me,” said the young lady, lifting
her searching eyes, after a pause, to the Colonel's, “though he WAS
awful shy, and allowed that you didn't know him from Adam, or even
suspect his existence. But I said, 'That's just where you slip up,
Hiram; a pow'ful man like the Colonel knows everything--and I've seen it
in his eye.' Lordy!” she continued, with a laugh, leaning forward over
her parasol, as her eyes again sought the Colonel's, “don't you remember
when you asked me if I loved that old Hotchkiss, and I told you, 'That's
tellin',' and you looked at me--Lordy! I knew THEN you suspected there
was a Hiram SOMEWHERE, as good as if I'd told you. Now you jest get up,
Hiram, and give the Colonel a good hand-shake. For if it wasn't for HIM
and HIS searchin' ways, and HIS awful power of language, I wouldn't hev
got that four thousand dollars out o' that flirty fool Hotchkiss--enough
to buy a farm, so as you and me could get married! That's what you owe
to HIM. Don't stand there like a stuck fool starin' at him. He won't eat
you--though he's killed many a better man. Come, have I got to do ALL
the kissin'?”

It is of record that the Colonel bowed so courteously and so profoundly
that he managed not merely to evade the proffered hand of the shy Hiram,
but to only lightly touch the franker and more impulsive finger-tips of
the gentle Zaidee. “I--er--offer my sincerest congratulations--though
I think you--er--overestimate--my--er--powers of penetration.
Unfortunately, a pressing engagement, which may oblige me also to leave
town tonight, forbids my saying more. I have--er--left the--er--business
settlement of this--er--case in the hands of the lawyers who do my
office work, and who will show you every attention. And now let me wish
you a very good afternoon.”

Nevertheless, the Colonel returned to his private room, and it was
nearly twilight when the faithful Jim entered, to find him sitting
meditatively before his desk. “'Fo' God! Kernel, I hope dey ain't nuffin
de matter, but you's lookin' mighty solemn! I ain't seen you look dat
way, Kernel, since de day pooh Massa Stryker was fetched home shot froo
de head.”

“Hand me down the whiskey, Jim,” said the Colonel, rising slowly.

The negro flew to the closet joyfully, and brought out the bottle.
The Colonel poured out a glass of the spirit and drank it with his old
deliberation.

“You're quite right, Jim,” he said, putting down his glass, “but
I'm--er--getting old--and--somehow I am missing poor Stryker damnably!”




THE LANDLORD OF THE BIG FLUME HOTEL


The Big Flume stage-coach had just drawn up at the Big Flume Hotel
simultaneously with the ringing of a large dinner bell in the two hands
of a negro waiter, who, by certain gyrations of the bell was trying to
impart to his performance that picturesque elegance and harmony
which the instrument and its purpose lacked. For the refreshment thus
proclaimed was only the ordinary station dinner, protracted at Big
Flume for three quarters of an hour, to allow for the arrival of the
connecting mail from Sacramento, although the repast was of a nature
that seldom prevailed upon the traveler to linger the full period over
its details. The ordinary cravings of hunger were generally satisfied in
half an hour, and the remaining minutes were employed by the passengers
in drowning the memory of their meal in “drinks at the bar,” in smoking,
and even in a hurried game of “old sledge,” or dominoes. Yet to-day
the deserted table was still occupied by a belated traveler, and a
lady--separated by a wilderness of empty dishes--who had arrived after
the stage-coach. Observing which, the landlord, perhaps touched by
this unwonted appreciation of his fare, moved forward to give them his
personal attention.

He was a man, however, who seemed to be singularly deficient in those
supreme qualities which in the West have exalted the ability to “keep a
hotel” into a proverbial synonym for superexcellence. He had little or
no innovating genius, no trade devices, no assumption, no faculty for
advertisement, no progressiveness, and no “racket.” He had the tolerant
good-humor of the Southwestern pioneer, to whom cyclones, famine,
drought, floods, pestilence, and savages were things to be accepted,
and whom disaster, if it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall. He
received the insults, complaints, and criticisms of hurried and hungry
passengers, the comments and threats of the Stage Company as he had
submitted to the aggressions of a stupid, unjust, but overruling
Nature--with unshaken calm. Perhaps herein lay his strength. People
were obliged to submit to him and his hotel as part of the unfinished
civilization, and they even saw something humorous in his impassiveness.
Those who preferred to remonstrate with him emerged from the discussion
with the general feeling of having been played with by a large-hearted
and paternally disposed bear. Tall and long-limbed, with much strength
in his lazy muscles, there was also a prevailing impression that this
feeling might be intensified if the discussion were ever carried to
physical contention. Of his personal history it was known only that he
had emigrated from Wisconsin in 1852, that he had calmly unyoked his ox
teams at Big Flume, then a trackless wilderness, and on the opening of a
wagon road to the new mines had built a wayside station which eventually
developed into the present hotel. He had been divorced in a Western
State by his wife “Rosalie,” locally known as “The Prairie Flower of
Elkham Creek,” for incompatibility of temper! Her temper was not stated.

Such was Abner Langworthy, the proprietor, as he moved leisurely down
towards the lady guest, who was nearest, and who was sitting with her
back to the passage between the tables. Stopping, occasionally, to
professionally adjust the tablecloths and glasses, he at last reached
her side.

“Ef there's anythin' more ye want that ye ain't seein', ma'am,” he
began--and stopped suddenly. For the lady had looked up at the sound of
his voice. It was his divorced wife, whom he had not seen since their
separation. The recognition was instantaneous, mutual, and characterized
by perfect equanimity on both sides.

“Well! I wanter know!” said the lady, although the exclamation point was
purely conventional. “Abner Langworthy! though perhaps I've no call to
say 'Abner.'”

“Same to you, Rosalie--though I say it too,” returned the landlord. “But
hol' on just a minit.” He moved forward to the other guest, put the same
perfunctory question regarding his needs, received a negative answer,
and then returned to the lady and dropped into a chair opposite to her.

“You're looking peart and--fleshy,” he said resignedly, as if he were
tolerating his own conventional politeness with his other difficulties;
“unless,” he added cautiously, “you're takin' on some new disease.”

“No! I'm fairly comf'ble,” responded the lady calmly, “and you're
gettin' on in the vale, ez is natural--though you still kind o' run to
bone, as you used.”

There was not a trace of malevolence in either of their comments, only
a resigned recognition of certain unpleasant truths which seemed to have
been habitual to both of them. Mr. Langworthy paused to flick away some
flies from the butter with his professional napkin, and resumed,--

“It must be a matter o' five years sens I last saw ye, isn't it?--in
court arter you got the decree--you remember?”

“Yes--the 28th o' July, '51. I paid Lawyer Hoskins's bill that very
day--that's how I remember,” returned the lady. “You've got a big
business here,” she continued, glancing round the room; “I reckon you're
makin' it pay. Don't seem to be in your line, though; but then, thar
wasn't many things that was.”

“No--that's so,” responded Mr. Langworthy, nodding his head, as
assenting to an undeniable proposition, “and you--I suppose you're
gettin' on too. I reckon you're--er--married--eh?”--with a slight
suggestion of putting the question delicately.

The lady nodded, ignoring the hesitation. “Yes, let me see, it's just
three years and three days. Constantine Byers--I don't reckon you know
him--from Milwaukee. Timber merchant. Standin' timber's his specialty.”

“And I reckon he's--satisfactory?”

“Yes! Mr. Byers is a good provider--and handy. And you? I should say
you'd want a wife in this business?”

Mr. Langworthy's serious half-perfunctory manner here took on an
appearance of interest. “Yes--I've bin thinkin' that way. Thar's a young
woman helpin' in the kitchen ez might do, though I'm not certain, and
I ain't lettin' on anything as yet. You might take a look at her,
Rosalie,--I orter say Mrs. Byers ez is,--and kinder size her up, and
gimme the result. It's still wantin' seven minutes o' schedule time
afore the stage goes, and--if you ain't wantin' more food”--delicately,
as became a landlord--“and ain't got anythin' else to do, it might pass
the time.”

Strange as it may seem, Mrs. Byers here displayed an equal animation in
her fresh face as she rose promptly to her feet and began to rearrange
her dust cloak around her buxom figure. “I don't mind, Abner,” she
said, “and I don't think that Mr. Byers would mind either;” then seeing
Langworthy hesitating at the latter unexpected suggestion, she added
confidently, “and I wouldn't mind even if he did, for I'm sure if I
don't know the kind o' woman you'd be likely to need, I don't know who
would. Only last week I was sayin' like that to Mr. Byers”--

“To Mr. Byers?” said Abner, with some surprise.

“Yes--to him. I said, 'We've been married three years, Constantine, and
ef I don't know by this time what kind o' woman you need now--and might
need in future--why, thar ain't much use in matrimony.'”

“You was always wise, Rosalie,” said Abner, with reminiscent
appreciation.

“I was always there, Abner,” returned Mrs. Byers, with a complacent show
of dimples, which she, however, chastened into that resignation which
seemed characteristic of the pair. “Let's see your 'intended'--as might
be.”

Thus supported, Mr. Langworthy led Mrs. Byers into the hall through a
crowd of loungers, into a smaller hall, and there opened the door of the
kitchen. It was a large room, whose windows were half darkened by the
encompassing pines which still pressed around the house on the scantily
cleared site. A number of men and women, among them a Chinaman and a
negro, were engaged in washing dishes and other culinary duties; and
beside the window stood a young blonde girl, who was wiping a tin pan
which she was also using to hide a burst of laughter evidently caused by
the abrupt entrance of her employer. A quantity of fluffy hair and part
of a white, bared arm were nevertheless visible outside the disk,
and Mrs. Byers gathered from the direction of Mr. Langworthy's eyes,
assisted by a slight nudge from his elbow, that this was the selected
fair one. His feeble explanatory introduction, addressed to the
occupants generally, “Just showing the house to Mrs.--er--Dusenberry,”
 convinced her that the circumstances of his having been divorced he had
not yet confided to the young woman. As he turned almost immediately
away, Mrs. Byers in following him managed to get a better look at the
girl, as she was exchanging some facetious remark to a neighbor. Mr.
Langworthy did not speak until they had reached the deserted dining-room
again.

“Well?” he said briefly, glancing at the clock, “what did ye think o'
Mary Ellen?”

To any ordinary observer the girl in question would have seemed the
least fitted in age, sobriety of deportment, and administrative capacity
to fill the situation thus proposed for her, but Mrs. Byers was not an
ordinary observer, and her auditor was not an ordinary listener.

“She's older than she gives herself out to be,” said Mrs. Byers
tentatively, “and them kitten ways don't amount to much.”

Mr. Langworthy nodded. Had Mrs. Byers discovered a homicidal tendency in
Mary Ellen he would have been equally unmoved.

“She don't handsome much,” continued Mrs. Byers musingly, “but”--

“I never was keen on good looks in a woman, Rosalie. You know that!”
 Mrs. Byers received the equivocal remark unemotionally, and returned to
the subject.

“Well!” she said contemplatively, “I should think you could make her
suit.”

Mr. Langworthy nodded with resigned toleration of all that might have
influenced her judgment and his own. “I was wantin' a fa'r-minded
opinion, Rosalie, and you happened along jest in time. Kin I put up
anythin' in the way of food for ye?” he added, as a stir outside and the
words “All aboard!” proclaimed the departing of the stage-coach,--“an
orange or a hunk o' gingerbread, freshly baked?”

“Thank ye kindly, Abner, but I sha'n't be usin' anythin' afore supper,”
 responded Mrs. Byers, as they passed out into the veranda beside the
waiting coach.

Mr. Langworthy helped her to her seat. “Ef you're passin' this way
ag'in”--he hesitated delicately.

“I'll drop in, or I reckon Mr. Byers might, he havin' business along the
road,” returned Mrs. Byers with a cheerful nod, as the coach rolled away
and the landlord of the Big Flume Hotel reentered his house.

For the next three weeks, however, it did not appear that Mr. Langworthy
was in any hurry to act upon the advice of his former wife. His
relations to Mary Ellen Budd were characterized by his usual tolerance
to his employees' failings,--which in Mary Ellen's case included many
“breakages,”--but were not marked by the invasion of any warmer feeling,
or a desire for confidences. The only perceptible divergence from his
regular habits was a disposition to be on the veranda at the arrival of
the stage-coach, and when his duties permitted this, a cautious survey
of his female guests at the beginning of dinner. This probably led to
his more or less ignoring any peculiarities in his masculine patrons or
their claims to his personal attention. Particularly so, in the case of
a red-bearded man, in a long linen duster, both heavily freighted with
the red dust of the stage road, which seemed to have invaded his very
eyes as he watched the landlord closely. Towards the close of the
dinner, when Abner, accompanied by a negro waiter after his usual
custom, passed down each side of the long table, collecting payment for
the meal, the stranger looked up. “You air the landlord of this hotel, I
reckon?”

“I am,” said Abner tolerantly.

“I'd like a word or two with ye.”

But Abner had been obliged to have a formula for such occasions. “Ye'll
pay for yer dinner first,” he said submissively, but firmly, “and make
yer remarks agin the food arter.”

The stranger flushed quickly, and his eye took an additional shade of
red, but meeting Abner's serious gray ones, he contented himself with
ostentatiously taking out a handful of gold and silver and paying his
bill. Abner passed on, but after dinner was over he found the stranger
in the hall.

“Ye pulled me up rather short in thar,” said the man gloomily, “but it's
just as well, as the talk I was wantin' with ye was kinder betwixt and
between ourselves, and not hotel business. My name's Byers, and my wife
let on she met ye down here.”

For the first time it struck Abner as incongruous that another man
should call Rosalie “his wife,” although the fact of her remarriage
had been made sufficiently plain to him. He accepted it as he would an
earthquake, or any other dislocation, with his usual tolerant smile, and
held out his hand.

Mr. Byers took it, seemingly mollified, and yet inwardly
disturbed,--more even than was customary in Abner's guests after dinner.

“Have a drink with me,” he suggested, although it had struck him that
Mr. Byers had been drinking before dinner.

“I'm agreeable,” responded Byers promptly; “but,” with a glance at the
crowded bar-room, “couldn't we go somewhere, jest you and me, and have a
quiet confab?”

“I reckon. But ye must wait till we get her off.”

Mr. Byers started slightly, but it appeared that the impedimental sex in
this case was the coach, which, after a slight feminine hesitation, was
at last started. Whereupon Mr. Langworthy, followed by a negro with a
tray bearing a decanter and glasses, grasped Mr. Byers's arm, and walked
along a small side veranda the depth of the house, stepped off, and
apparently plunged with his guest into the primeval wilderness.

It has already been indicated that the site of the Big Flume Hotel had
been scantily cleared; but Mr. Byers, backwoodsman though he was, was
quite unprepared for so abrupt a change. The hotel, with its noisy crowd
and garish newness, although scarcely a dozen yards away, seemed lost
completely to sight and sound. A slight fringe of old tin cans, broken
china, shavings, and even of the long-dried chips of the felled trees,
once crossed, the two men were alone! From the tray, deposited at the
foot of an enormous pine, they took the decanter, filled their glasses,
and then disposed of themselves comfortably against a spreading root.
The curling tail of a squirrel disappeared behind them; the far-off tap
of a woodpecker accented the loneliness. And then, almost magically as
it seemed, the thin veneering of civilization on the two men seemed to
be cast off like the bark of the trees around them, and they lounged
before each other in aboriginal freedom. Mr. Byers removed his
restraining duster and undercoat. Mr. Langworthy resigned his dirty
white jacket, his collar, and unloosed a suspender, with which he
played.

“Would it be a fair question between two fa'r-minded men, ez hez lived
alone,” said Mr. Byers, with a gravity so supernatural that it could be
referred only to liquor, “to ask ye in what sort o' way did Mrs. Byers
show her temper?”

“Show her temper?” echoed Abner vacantly.

“Yes--in course, I mean when you and Mrs. Byers was--was--one? You know
the di-vorce was for in-com-pat-ibility of temper.”

“But she got the divorce from me, so I reckon I had the temper,” said
Langworthy, with great simplicity.

“Wha-at?” said Mr. Byers, putting down his glass and gazing with drunken
gravity at the sad-eyed yet good-humoredly tolerant man before him.
“You?--you had the temper?”

“I reckon that's what the court allowed,” said Abner simply.

Mr. Byers stared. Then after a moment's pause he nodded with a
significant yet relieved face. “Yes, I see, in course. Times when you'd
h'isted too much o' this corn juice,” lifting up his glass, “inside
ye--ye sorter bu'st out ravin'?”

But Abner shook his head. “I wuz a total abstainer in them days,” he
said quietly.

Mr. Byers got unsteadily on his legs and looked around him. “Wot might
hev bin the general gait o' your temper, pardner?” he said in a hoarse
whisper.

“Don't know. I reckon that's jest whar the incompatibility kem in.”

“And when she hove plates at your head, wot did you do?”

“She didn't hove no plates,” said Abner gravely; “did she say she did?”

“No, no!” returned Byers hastily, in crimson confusion. “I kinder got
it mixed with suthin' else.” He waved his hand in a lordly way, as if
dismissing the subject. “Howsumever, you and her is 'off' anyway,” he
added with badly concealed anxiety.

“I reckon: there's the decree,” returned Abner, with his usual resigned
acceptance of the fact.

“Mrs. Byers wuz allowin' ye wuz thinkin' of a second. How's that comin'
on?”

“Jest whar it was,” returned Abner. “I ain't doin' anything yet. Ye see
I've got to tell the gal, naterally, that I'm di-vorced. And as that
isn't known hereabouts, I don't keer to do so till I'm pretty certain.
And then, in course, I've got to.”

“Why hev ye 'got to'?” asked Byers abruptly.

“Because it wouldn't be on the square with the girl,” said Abner. “How
would you like it if Mrs. Byers had never told you she'd been married to
me? And s'pose you'd happen to hev bin a di-vorced man and hadn't told
her, eh? Well,” he continued, sinking back resignedly against the tree,
“I ain't sayin' anythin' but she'd hev got another di-vorce, and FROM
you on the spot--you bet!”

“Well! all I kin say is,” said Mr. Byers, lifting his voice excitedly,
“that”--but he stopped short, and was about to fill his glass again from
the decanter when the hand of Abner stopped him.

“Ye've got ez much ez ye kin carry now, Byers,” he said slowly, “and
that's about ez much ez I allow a man to take in at the Big Flume Hotel.
Treatin' is treatin', hospitality is hospitality; ef you and me was
squattin' out on the prairie I'd let you fill your skin with that pizen
and wrap ye up in yer blankets afterwards. But here at Big Flume, the
Stage Kempenny and the wimen and children passengers hez their rights.”
 He paused a moment, and added, “And so I reckon hez Mrs. Byers, and I
ain't goin' to send you home to her outer my house blind drunk. It's
mighty rough on you and me, I know, but there's a lot o' roughness in
this world ez hez to be got over, and life, ez far ez I kin see, ain't
all a clearin'.”

Perhaps it was his good-humored yet firm determination, perhaps it was
his resigned philosophy, but something in the speaker's manner affected
Mr. Byers's alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the
passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he
was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal
moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner's hand with drunken
fervor. “Thash so! your thinking o' me an' Mish Byersh is like troo
fr'en',” he said thickly. “I wosh only goin' to shay that wotever Mish
Byersh wosh--even if she wosh wife o' yours--she wosh--noble woman! Such
a woman,” continued Mr. Byers, dreamily regarding space, “can't have too
many husbands.”

“You jest sit back here a minit, and have a quiet smoke till I come
back,” said Abner, handing him his tobacco plug. “I've got to give the
butcher his order--but I won't be a minit.” He secured the decanter as
he spoke, and evading an apparent disposition of his companion to fall
upon his neck, made his way with long strides to the hotel, as Mr.
Byers, sinking back against the trees, began certain futile efforts to
light his unfilled pipe.

Whether Abner's attendance on the butcher was merely an excuse to
withdraw with the decanter, I cannot say. He, however, dispatched his
business quickly, and returned to the tree. But to his surprise Mr.
Byers was no longer there. He explored the adjacent woodland with
non-success, and no reply to his shouting. Annoyed but not alarmed, as
it seemed probable that the missing man had fallen in a drunken sleep in
some hidden shadows, he returned to the house, when it occurred to him
that Byers might have sought the bar-room for some liquor. But he was
still more surprised when the barkeeper volunteered the information
that he had seen Mr. Byers hurriedly pass down the side veranda into the
highroad. An hour later this was corroborated by an arriving teamster,
who had passed a man answering to the description of Byers, “mor' 'n
half full,” staggeringly but hurriedly walking along the road “two
miles back.” There seemed to be no doubt that the missing man had
taken himself off in a fit of indignation or of extreme thirst.
Either hypothesis was disagreeable to Abner, in his queer sense
of responsibility to Mrs. Byers, but he accepted it with his usual
good-humored resignation.

Yet it was difficult to conceive what connection this episode had in
his mind with his suspended attention to Mary Ellen, or why it should
determine his purpose. But he had a logic of his own, and it seemed to
have demonstrated to him that he must propose to the girl at once.
This was no easy matter, however; he had never shown her any previous
attention, and her particular functions in the hotel,--the charge of the
few bedrooms for transient guests--seldom brought him in contact with
her. His interview would have to appear to be a business one--which,
however, he wished to avoid from a delicate consciousness of its truth.
While making up his mind, for a few days he contented himself with
gravely regarding her in his usual resigned, tolerant way, whenever he
passed her. Unfortunately the first effect of this was an audible giggle
from Mary Ellen, later some confusion and anxiety in her manner, and
finally a demeanor of resentment and defiance.

This was so different from what he had expected that he was obliged
to precipitate matters. The next day was Sunday,--a day on which his
employees, in turns, were allowed the recreation of being driven to Big
Flume City, eight miles distant, to church, or for the day's holiday.
In the morning Mary Ellen was astonished by Abner informing her that he
designed giving her a separate holiday with himself. It must be admitted
that the girl, who was already “prinked up” for the enthrallment of the
youth of Big Flume City, did not appear as delighted with the change of
plan as a more exacting lover would have liked. Howbeit, as soon as the
wagon had left with its occupants, Abner, in the unwonted disguise of
a full suit of black clothes, turned to the girl, and offering her his
arm, gravely proceeded along the side veranda across the mound of debris
already described, to the adjacent wilderness and the very trees under
which he and Byers had sat.

“It's about ez good a place for a little talk, Miss Budd,” he said,
pointing to a tree root, “ez ef we went a spell further, and it's handy
to the house. And ef you'll jest say what you'd like outer the cupboard
or the bar--no matter which--I'll fetch it to you.”

But Mary Ellen Budd seated herself sideways on the root, with her furled
white parasol in her lap, her skirts fastidiously tucked about her feet,
and glancing at the fatuous Abner from under her stack of fluffy hair
and light eyelashes, simply shook her head and said that “she reckoned
she wasn't hankering much for anything” that morning.

“I've been calkilatin' to myself, Miss Budd,” said Abner resignedly,
“that when two folks--like ez you and me--meet together to kinder
discuss things that might go so far ez to keep them together, if they
hez had anything of that sort in their lives afore, they ought to speak
of it confidentially like together.”

“Ef any one o' them sneakin', soulless critters in the kitchen hez bin
slingin' lies to ye about me--or carryin' tales,” broke in Mary Ellen
Budd, setting every one of her thirty-two strong, white teeth together
with a snap, “well--ye might hev told me so to oncet without spilin' my
Sunday! But ez fer yer keepin' me a minit longer, ye've only got to pay
me my salary to-day and”--but here she stopped, for the astonishment in
Abner's face was too plain to be misunderstood.

“Nobody's been slinging any lies about ye, Miss Budd,” he said slowly,
recovering himself resignedly from this last back-handed stroke of fate;
“I warn't talkin' o' you, but myself. I was only allowin' to say that I
was a di-vorced man.”

As a sudden flush came over Mary Ellen's brownish-white face while
she stared at him, Abner hastened to delicately explain. “It wasn't
no onfaithfulness, Miss Budd--no philanderin' o' mine, but only
'incompatibility o' temper.'”

“Temper--your temper!” gasped Mary Ellen.

“Yes,” said Abner.

And here a sudden change came over Mary Ellen's face, and she burst into
a shriek of laughter. She laughed with her hands slapping the sides of
her skirt, she laughed with her hands clasping her narrow, hollow waist,
laughed with her head down on her knees and her fluffy hair tumbling
over it. Abner was relieved, and yet it seemed strange to him that this
revelation of his temper should provoke such manifest incredulity in
both Byers and Mary Ellen. But perhaps these things would be made plain
to him hereafter; at present they must be accepted “in the day's work”
 and tolerated.

“Your temper,” gurgled Mary Ellen. “Saints alive! What kind o' temper?”

“Well, I reckon,” returned Abner submissively, and selecting a word
to give his meaning more comprehension,--“I reckon it was
kinder--aggeravokin'.”

Mary Ellen sniffed the air for a moment in speechless incredulity, and
then, locking her hands around her knees and bending forward, said,
“Look here! Ef that old woman o' yours ever knew what temper was in a
man; ef she's ever bin tied to a brute that treated her like a nigger
till she daren't say her soul was her own; who struck her with his
eyes and tongue when he hadn't anythin' else handy; who made her life
miserable when he was sober, and a terror when he was drunk; who at
last drove her away, and then divorced her for desertion--then--then she
might talk. But 'incompatibility o' temper' with you! Oh, go away--it
makes me sick!”

How far Abner was impressed with the truth of this, how far it prompted
his next question, nobody but Abner knew. For he said deliberately, “I
was only goin' to ask ye, if, knowin' I was a di-vorced man, ye would
mind marryin' me!”

Mary Ellen's face changed; the evasive instincts of her sex rose up.
“Didn't I hear ye sayin' suthin' about refreshments,” she said archly.
“Mebbe you wouldn't mind gettin' me a bottle o' lemming sody outer the
bar!”

Abner got up at once, perhaps not dismayed by this diversion, and
departed for the refreshment. As he passed along the side veranda the
recollection of Mr. Byers and his mysterious flight occurred to him. For
a wild moment he thought of imitating him. But it was too late now--he
had spoken. Besides, he had no wife to fly to, and the thirsty or
indignant Byers had--his wife! Fate was indeed hard. He returned with
the bottle of lemon soda on a tray and a resigned spirit equal to her
decrees. Mary Ellen, remarking that he had brought nothing for himself,
archly insisted upon his sharing with her the bottle of soda, and even
coquettishly touched his lips with her glass. Abner smiled patiently.

But here, as if playfully exhilarated by the naughty foaming soda, she
regarded him with her head--and a good deal of her blonde hair--very
much on one side, as she said, “Do you know that all along o' you bein'
so free with me in tellin' your affairs I kinder feel like just telling
you mine?”

“Don't,” said Abner promptly.

“Don't?” echoed Miss Budd.

“Don't,” repeated Abner. “It's nothing to me. What I said about myself
is different, for it might make some difference to you. But nothing you
could say of yourself would make any change in me. I stick to what I
said just now.”

“But,” said Miss Budd,--in half real, half simulated threatening,--“what
if it had suthin' to do with my answer to what you said just now?”

“It couldn't. So, if it's all the same to you, Miss Budd, I'd rather ye
wouldn't.”

“That,” said the lady still more archly, lifting a playful finger, “is
your temper.”

“Mebbe it is,” said Abner suddenly, with a wondering sense of relief.

It was, however, settled that Miss Budd should go to Sacramento to visit
her friends, that Abner would join her later, when their engagement
would be announced, and that she should not return to the hotel until
they were married. The compact was sealed by the interchange of a
friendly kiss from Miss Budd with a patient, tolerating one from Abner,
and then it suddenly occurred to them both that they might as well
return to their duties in the hotel, which they did. Miss Budd's entire
outing that Sunday lasted only half an hour.

A week elapsed. Miss Budd was in Sacramento, and the landlord of the Big
Flume Hotel was standing at his usual post in the doorway during dinner,
when a waiter handed him a note. It contained a single line scrawled in
pencil:--


“Come out and see me behind the house as before. I dussent come in on
account of her. C. BYERS.”


“On account of 'her'!” Abner cast a hurried glance around the tables.
Certainly Mrs. Byers was not there! He walked in the hall and the
veranda--she was not there. He hastened to the rendezvous evidently
meant by the writer, the wilderness behind the house. Sure enough,
Byers, drunk and maudlin, supporting himself by the tree root, staggered
forward, clasped him in his arms, and murmured hoarsely,--

“She's gone!”

“Gone?” echoed Abner, with a whitening face. “Mrs. Byers? Where?”

“Run away! Never come back no more! Gone!”

A vague idea that had been in Abner's mind since Byers's last visit now
took awful shape. Before the unfortunate Byers could collect his senses
he felt himself seized in a giant's grasp and forced against the tree.

“You coward!” said all that was left of the tolerant Abner--his even
voice--“you hound! Did you dare to abuse her? to lay your vile hands on
her--to strike her? Answer me.”

The shock--the grasp--perhaps Abner's words, momentarily silenced Byers.
“Did I strike her?” he said dazedly; “did I abuse her? Oh, yes!” with
deep irony. “Certainly! In course! Look yer, pardner!”--he suddenly
dragged up his sleeve from his red, hairy arm, exposing a blue cicatrix
in its centre--“that's a jab from her scissors about three months ago;
look yer!”--he bent his head and showed a scar along the scalp--“that's
her playfulness with a fire shovel! Look yer!”--he quickly opened his
collar, where his neck and cheek were striped and crossed with adhesive
plaster--“that's all that was left o' a glass jar o' preserves--the
preserves got away, but some of the glass got stuck! That's when she
heard I was a di-vorced man and hadn't told her.”

“Were you a di-vorced man?” gasped Abner.

“You know that; in course I was,” said Byers scornfully; “d'ye meanter
say she didn't tell ye?”

“She?” echoed Abner vaguely. “Your wife--you said just now she didn't
know it before.”

“My wife ez oncet was, I mean! Mary Ellen--your wife ez is to be,” said
Byers, with deep irony. “Oh, come now. Pretend ye don't know! Hi there!
Hands off! Don't strike a man when he's down, like I am.”

But Abner's clutch of Byers's shoulder relaxed, and he sank down to a
sitting posture on the root. In the meantime Byers, overcome by a sense
of this new misery added to his manifold grievances, gave way to maudlin
silent tears.

“Mary Ellen--your first wife?” repeated Abner vacantly.

“Yesh!” said Byers thickly, “my first wife--shelected and picked out
fer your shecond wife--by your first--like d----d conundrum. How wash I
t'know?” he said, with a sudden shriek of public expostulation--“thash
what I wanter know. Here I come to talk with fr'en', like man to man,
unshuspecting, innoshent as chile, about my shecond wife! Fr'en' drops
out, carryin' off the whiskey. Then I hear all o' suddent voice o'
Mary Ellen talkin' in kitchen; then I come round softly and see Mary
Ellen--my wife as useter be--standin' at fr'en's kitchen winder. Then I
lights out quicker 'n lightnin' and scoots! And when I gets back home,
I ups and tells my wife. And whosh fault ish't! Who shaid a man oughter
tell hish wife? You! Who keepsh other mensh' first wivesh at kishen
winder to frighten 'em to tell? You!”

But a change had already come over the face of Abner Langworthy. The
anger, anxiety, astonishment, and vacuity that was there had vanished,
and he looked up with his usual resigned acceptance of the inevitable
as he said, “I reckon that's so! And seein' it's so,” with good-natured
tolerance, he added, “I reckon I'll break rules for oncet and stand ye
another drink.”

He stood another drink and yet another, and eventually put the doubly
widowed Byers to bed in his own room. These were but details of a larger
tribulation,--and yet he knew instinctively that his cup was not yet
full. The further drop of bitterness came a few days later in a line
from Mary Ellen: “I needn't tell you that all betwixt you and me is off,
and you kin tell your old woman that her selection for a second wife
for you wuz about as bad as your own first selection. Ye kin tell Mr.
Byers--yer great friend whom ye never let on ye knew--that when I want
another husband I shan't take the trouble to ask him to fish one out for
me. It would be kind--but confusin'.”

He never heard from her again. Mr. Byers was duly notified that Mrs.
Byers had commenced action for divorce in another state in which
concealment of a previous divorce invalidated the marriage, but he did
not respond. The two men became great friends--and assured celibates.
Yet they always spoke reverently of their “wife,” with the touching
prefix of “our.”

“She was a good woman, pardner,” said Byers.

“And she understood us,” said Abner resignedly.

Perhaps she had.




A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE


The four men on the “Zip Coon” Ledge had not got fairly settled to their
morning's work. There was the usual lingering hesitation which is apt to
attend the taking-up of any regular or monotonous performance, shown in
this instance in the prolonged scrutiny of a pick's point, the solemn
selection of a shovel, or the “hefting” or weighing of a tapping-iron or
drill. One member, becoming interested in a funny paragraph he found in
the scrap of newspaper wrapped around his noonday cheese, shamelessly
sat down to finish it, regardless of the prospecting pan thrown at him
by another. They had taken up their daily routine of mining life like
schoolboys at their tasks.

“Hello!” said Ned Wyngate, joyously recognizing a possible further
interruption. “Blamed if the Express rider ain't comin' here!”

He was shading his eyes with his hand as he gazed over the broad
sun-baked expanse of broken “flat” between them and the highroad. They
all looked up, and saw the figure of a mounted man, with a courier's
bag thrown over his shoulder, galloping towards them. It was really
an event, as their letters were usually left at the grocery at the
crossroads.

“I knew something was goin' to happen,” said Wyngate. “I didn't feel a
bit like work this morning.”

Here one of their number ran off to meet the advancing horseman. They
watched him until they saw the latter rein up, and hand a brown envelope
to their messenger, who ran breathlessly back with it to the Ledge as
the horseman galloped away again.

“A telegraph for Jackson Wells,” he said, handing it to the young man
who had been reading the scrap of paper.

There was a dead silence. Telegrams were expensive rarities in those
days, especially with the youthful Bohemian miners of the Zip Coon
Ledge. They were burning with curiosity, yet a singular thing happened.
Accustomed as they had been to a life of brotherly familiarity and
unceremoniousness, this portentous message from the outside world of
civilization recalled their old formal politeness. They looked steadily
away from the receiver of the telegram, and he on his part stammered an
apologetic “Excuse me, boys,” as he broke the envelope.

There was another pause, which seemed to be interminable to the waiting
partners. Then the voice of Wells, in quite natural tones, said, “By
gum! that's funny! Read that, Dexter,--read it out loud.”

Dexter Rice, the foreman, took the proffered telegram from Wells's hand,
and read as follows:--


Your uncle, Quincy Wells, died yesterday, leaving you sole heir. Will
attend you to-morrow for instructions.

BAKER AND TWIGGS,

Attorneys, Sacramento.


The three miners' faces lightened and turned joyously to Wells; but HIS
face looked puzzled.

“May we congratulate you, Mr. Wells?” said Wyngate, with affected
politeness; “or possibly your uncle may have been English, and a title
goes with the 'prop,' and you may be Lord Wells, or Very Wells--at
least.”

But here Jackson Wells's youthful face lost its perplexity, and he began
to laugh long and silently to himself. This was protracted to such an
extent that Dexter asserted himself,--as foreman and senior partner.

“Look here, Jack! don't sit there cackling like a chuckle-headed magpie,
if you ARE the heir.”

“I--can't--help it,” gasped Jackson. “I am the heir--but you see, boys,
there AIN'T ANY PROPERTY.”

“What do you mean? Is all that a sell?” demanded Rice.

“Not much! Telegraph's too expensive for that sort o' feelin'. You see,
boys, I've got an Uncle Quincy, though I don't know him much, and he MAY
be dead. But his whole fixin's consisted of a claim the size of ours,
and played out long ago: a ramshackle lot o' sheds called a cottage, and
a kind of market garden of about three acres, where he reared and sold
vegetables. He was always poor, and as for calling it 'property,' and ME
the 'heir'--good Lord!”

“A miser, as sure as you're born!” said Wyngate, with optimistic
decision. “That's always the way. You'll find every crack of that
blessed old shed stuck full of greenbacks and certificates of deposit,
and lots of gold dust and coin buried all over that cow patch! And of
course no one suspected it! And of course he lived alone, and never let
any one get into his house--and nearly starved himself! Lord love you!
There's hundreds of such cases. The world is full of 'em!”

“That's so,” chimed in Pulaski Briggs, the fourth partner, “and I tell
you what, Jacksey, we'll come over with you the day you take possession,
and just 'prospect' the whole blamed shanty, pigsties, and potato patch,
for fun--and won't charge you anything.”

For a moment Jackson's face had really brightened under the infection of
enthusiasm, but it presently settled into perplexity again.

“No! You bet the boys around Buckeye Hollow would have spotted anything
like that long ago.”

“Buckeye Hollow!” repeated Rice and his partners.

“Yes! Buckeye Hollow, that's the place; not twenty miles from here, and
a God-forsaken hole, as you know.”

A cloud had settled on Zip Coon Ledge. They knew of Buckeye Hollow, and
it was evident that no good had ever yet come out of that Nazareth.

“There's no use of talking now,” said Rice conclusively. “You'll draw it
all from that lawyer shark who's coming here tomorrow, and you can bet
your life he wouldn't have taken this trouble if there wasn't suthin' in
it. Anyhow, we'll knock off work now and call it half a day, in honor
of our distinguished young friend's accession to his baronial estates
of Buckeye Hollow. We'll just toddle down to Tomlinson's at the
cross-roads, and have a nip and a quiet game of old sledge at Jacksey's
expense. I reckon the estate's good for THAT,” he added, with severe
gravity. “And, speaking as a fa'r-minded man and the president of
this yer Company, if Jackson would occasionally take out and air that
telegraphic dispatch of his while we're at Tomlinson's, it might do
something for that Company's credit--with Tomlinson! We're wantin' some
new blastin' plant bad!”

Oddly enough the telegram--accidentally shown at Tomlinson's--produced a
gratifying effect, and the Zip Coon Ledge materially advanced in
public estimation. With this possible infusion of new capital into its
resources, the Company was beset by offers of machinery and goods;
and it was deemed expedient by the sapient Rice, that to prevent the
dissemination of any more accurate information regarding Jackson's
property the next day, the lawyer should be met at the stage office by
one of the members, and conveyed secretly past Tomlinson's to the Ledge.

“I'd let you go,” he said to Jackson, “only it won't do for that d----d
skunk of a lawyer to think you're too anxious--sabe? We want to rub into
him that we are in the habit out yer of havin' things left to us, and
a fortin' more or less, falling into us now and then, ain't nothin'
alongside of the Zip Coon claim. It won't hurt ye to keep up a big bluff
on that hand of yours. Nobody would dare to 'call' you.”

Indeed this idea was carried out with such elaboration the next day that
Mr. Twiggs, the attorney, was considerably impressed both by the conduct
of his guide, who (although burning with curiosity) expressed absolute
indifference regarding Jackson Wells's inheritance, and the calmness of
Jackson himself, who had to be ostentatiously called from his work on
the Ledge to meet him, and who even gave him an audience in the hearing
of his partners. Forced into an apologetic attitude, he expressed his
regret at being obliged to bother Mr. Wells with an affair of such
secondary importance, but he was obliged to carry out the formalities of
the law.

“What do you suppose the estate is worth?” asked Wells carelessly.

“I should not think that the house, the claim, and the land would bring
more than fifteen hundred dollars,” replied Twiggs submissively.

To the impecunious owners of Zip Coon Ledge it seemed a large sum, but
they did not show it.

“You see,” continued Mr. Twiggs, “it's really a case of 'willing away'
property from its obvious or direct inheritors, instead of a beneficial
grant. I take it that you and your uncle were not particularly
intimate,--at least, so I gathered when I made the will,--and his simple
object was to disinherit his only daughter, with whom he had had some
quarrel, and who had left him to live with his late wife's brother, Mr.
Morley Brown, who is quite wealthy and residing in the same township.
Perhaps you remember the young lady?”

Jackson Wells had a dim recollection of this cousin, a hateful,
red-haired schoolgirl, and an equally unpleasant memory of this other
uncle, who was purse-proud and had never taken any notice of him. He
answered affirmatively.

“There may be some attempt to contest the will,” continued Mr. Twiggs,
“as the disinheriting of an only child and a daughter offends the
sentiment of the people and of judges and jury, and the law makes such
a will invalid, unless a reason is given. Fortunately your uncle has
placed his reasons on record. I have a copy of the will here, and can
show you the clause.” He took it from his pocket, and read as follows:
“'I exclude my daughter, Jocelinda Wells, from any benefit or provision
of this my will and testament, for the reason that she has voluntarily
abandoned her father's roof for the house of her mother's brother,
Morley Brown; has preferred the fleshpots of Egypt to the virtuous
frugalities of her own home, and has discarded the humble friends of
her youth, and the associates of her father, for the meretricious
and slavish sympathy of wealth and position. In lieu thereof, and as
compensation therefor, I do hereby give and bequeath to her my full and
free permission to gratify her frequently expressed wish for another
guardian in place of myself, and to become the adopted daughter of the
said Morley Brown, with the privilege of assuming the name of Brown
as aforesaid.' You see,” he continued, “as the young lady's present
position is a better one than it would be if she were in her father's
house, and was evidently a compromise, the sentimental consideration of
her being left homeless and penniless falls to the ground. However, as
the inheritance is small, and might be of little account to you, if you
choose to waive it, I dare say we may make some arrangement.”

This was an utterly unexpected idea to the Zip Coon Company, and
Jackson Wells was for a moment silent. But Dexter Rice was equal to the
emergency, and turned to the astonished lawyer with severe dignity.

“You'll excuse me for interferin', but, as the senior partner of this
yer Ledge, and Jackson Wells yer bein' a most important member, what
affects his usefulness on this claim affects us. And we propose to carry
out this yer will, with all its dips and spurs and angles!”

As the surprised Twiggs turned from one to the other, Rice continued,
“Ez far as we kin understand this little game, it's the just punishment
of a high-flying girl as breaks her pore old father's heart, and the
re-ward of a young feller ez has bin to our knowledge ez devoted a
nephew as they make 'em. Time and time again, sittin' around our camp
fire at night, we've heard Jacksey say,--kinder to himself, and kinder
to us, 'Now I wonder what's gone o' old uncle Quincy;' and he never
sat down to a square meal, or ever rose from a square game, but what
he allus said, 'If old uncle Quince was only here now, boys, I'd die
happy.' I leave it to you, gentlemen, if that wasn't Jackson Wells's
gait all the time?”

There was a prolonged murmur of assent, and an affecting corroboration
from Ned Wyngate of “That was him; that was Jacksey all the time!”

“Indeed, indeed,” said the lawyer nervously. “I had quite the idea that
there was very little fondness”--

“Not on your side--not on your side,” said Rice quickly. “Uncle Quincy
may not have anted up in this matter o' feelin', nor seen his nephew's
rise. You know how it is yourself in these things--being a lawyer and a
fa'r-minded man--it's all on one side, ginerally! There's always one who
loves and sacrifices, and all that, and there's always one who rakes in
the pot! That's the way o' the world; and that's why,” continued Rice,
abandoning his slightly philosophical attitude, and laying his hand
tenderly, and yet with a singularly significant grip, on Wells's arm,
“we say to him, 'Hang on to that will, and uncle Quincy's memory.'
And we hev to say it. For he's that tender-hearted and keerless of
money--having his own share in this Ledge--that ef that girl came
whimperin' to him he'd let her take the 'prop' and let the hull thing
slide! And then he'd remember that he had rewarded that gal that broke
the old man's heart, and that would upset him again in his work. And
there, you see, is just where WE come in! And we say, 'Hang on to that
will like grim death!'”

The lawyer looked curiously at Rice and his companions, and then turned
to Wells: “Nevertheless, I must look to you for instructions,” he said
dryly.

But by this time Jackson Wells, although really dubious about
supplanting the orphan, had gathered the sense of his partners, and said
with a frank show of decision, “I think I must stand by the will.”

“Then I'll have it proved,” said Twiggs, rising. “In the meantime, if
there is any talk of contesting”--

“If there is, you might say,” suggested Wyngate, who felt he had not had
a fair show in the little comedy,--“ye might say to that old skeesicks
of a wife's brother, if he wants to nipple in, that there are four men
on the Ledge--and four revolvers! We are gin'rally fa'r-minded, peaceful
men, but when an old man's heart is broken, and his gray hairs brought
down in sorrow to the grave, so to speak, we're bound to attend the
funeral--sabe?”

When Mr. Twiggs had departed again, accompanied by a partner to guide
him past the dangerous shoals of Tomlinson's grocery, Rice clapped his
hand on Wells's shoulder. “If it hadn't been for me, sonny, that shark
would have landed you into some compromise with that red-haired gal! I
saw you weakenin', and then I chipped in. I may have piled up the agony
a little on your love for old Quince, but if you aren't an ungrateful
cub, that's how you ought to hev been feein', anyhow!”

Nevertheless, the youthful Wells, although touched by his elder
partner's loyalty, and convinced of his own disinterestedness, felt a
painful sense of lost chivalrous opportunity.

*****

On mature consideration it was finally settled that Jackson Wells should
make his preliminary examination of his inheritance alone, as it might
seem inconsistent with the previous indifferent attitude of his
partners if they accompanied him. But he was implored to yield to no
blandishments of the enemy, and to even make his visit a secret.

He went. The familiar flower-spiked trees which had given their name
to Buckeye Hollow had never yielded entirely to improvements and the
incursions of mining enterprise, and many of them had even survived the
disused ditches, the scarred flats, the discarded levels, ruined flumes,
and roofless cabins of the earlier occupation, so that when Jackson
Wells entered the wide, straggling street of Buckeye, that summer
morning was filled with the radiance of its blossoms and fragrant with
their incense. His first visit there, ten years ago, had been a purely
perfunctory and hasty one, yet he remembered the ostentatious hotel,
built in the “flush time” of its prosperity, and already in a green
premature decay; he recalled the Express Office and Town Hall, also
passing away in a kind of similar green deliquescence; the little zinc
church, now overgrown with fern and brambles, and the two or three fine
substantial houses in the outskirts, which seemed to have sucked the
vitality of the little settlement. One of these--he had been told--was
the property of his rich and wicked maternal uncle, the hated
appropriator of his red-headed cousin's affections. He recalled his
brief visit to the departed testator's claim and market garden, and his
by no means favorable impression of the lonely, crabbed old man, as well
as his relief that his objectionable cousin, whom he had not seen since
he was a boy, was then absent at the rival uncle's. He made his way
across the road to a sunny slope where the market garden of three acres
seemed to roll like a river of green rapids to a little “run” or brook,
which, even in the dry season, showed a trickling rill. But here he was
struck by a singular circumstance. The garden rested in a rich, alluvial
soil, and under the quickening Californian sky had developed far beyond
the ability of its late cultivator to restrain or keep it in order.
Everything had grown luxuriantly, and in monstrous size and profusion.
The garden had even trespassed its bounds, and impinged upon the open
road, the deserted claims, and the ruins of the past. Stimulated by the
little cultivation Quincy Wells had found time to give it, it had
leaped its three acres and rioted through the Hollow. There were scarlet
runners crossing the abandoned sluices, peas climbing the court-house
wall, strawberries matting the trail, while the seeds and pollen of
its few homely Eastern flowers had been blown far and wide through the
woods. By a grim satire, Nature seemed to have been the only thing that
still prospered in that settlement of man.

The cabin itself, built of unpainted boards, consisted of a
sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen, and two bedrooms, all plainly
furnished, although one of the bedrooms was better ordered, and
displayed certain signs of feminine decoration, which made Jackson
believe it had been his cousin's room. Luckily, the slight, temporary
structure bore no deep traces of its previous occupancy to disturb him
with its memories, and for the same reason it gained in cleanliness and
freshness. The dry, desiccating summer wind that blew through it had
carried away both the odors and the sense of domesticity; even the adobe
hearth had no fireside tales to tell,--its very ashes had been scattered
by the winds; and the gravestone of its dead owner on the hill was no
more flavorless of his personality than was this plain house in which he
had lived and died. The excessive vegetation produced by the stirred-up
soil had covered and hidden the empty tin cans, broken boxes, and
fragments of clothing which usually heaped and littered the tent-pegs
of the pioneer. Nature's own profusion had thrust them into obscurity.
Jackson Wells smiled as he recalled his sanguine partner's idea of a
treasure-trove concealed and stuffed in the crevices of this tenement,
already so palpably picked clean by those wholesome scavengers of
California, the dry air and burning sun. Yet he was not displeased at
this obliteration of a previous tenancy; there was the better chance for
him to originate something. He whistled hopefully as he lounged, with
his hands in his pockets, towards the only fence and gate that gave upon
the road. Something stuck up on the gate-post attracted his attention.
It was a sheet of paper bearing the inscription in a large hand: “Notice
to trespassers. Look out for the Orphan Robber!” A plain signboard in
faded black letters on the gate, which had borne the legend: “Quincy
Wells, Dealer in Fruit and Vegetables,” had been rudely altered in chalk
to read: “Jackson Wells, Double Dealer in Wills and Codicils,” and the
intimation “Bouquets sold here” had been changed to “Bequests stole
here.” For an instant the simple-minded Jackson failed to discover
any significance of this outrage, which seemed to him to be merely
the wanton mischief of a schoolboy. But a sudden recollection of
the lawyer's caution sent the blood to his cheeks and kindled
his indignation. He tore down the paper and rubbed out the chalk
interpolation--and then laughed at his own anger. Nevertheless, he would
not have liked his belligerent partners to see it.

A little curious to know the extent of this feeling, he entered one of
the shops, and by one or two questions which judiciously betrayed his
ownership of the property, he elicited only a tradesman's interest in a
possible future customer, and the ordinary curiosity about a stranger.
The barkeeper of the hotel was civil, but brief and gloomy. He had heard
the property was “willed away on account of some family quarrel which
'warn't none of his'.” Mr. Wells would find Buckeye Hollow a mighty dull
place after the mines. It was played out, sucked dry by two or three big
mine owners who were trying to “freeze out” the other settlers, so as
they might get the place to themselves and “boom it.” Brown, who had the
big house over the hill, was the head devil of the gang! Wells felt his
indignation kindle anew. And this girl that he had ousted was Brown's
friend. Was it possible that she was a party to Brown's designs to get
this three acres with the other lands? If so, his long-suffering uncle
was only just in his revenge.

He put all this diffidently before his partners on his return, and was a
little startled at their adopting it with sanguine ferocity. They hoped
that he would put an end to his thoughts of backing out of it. Such a
course now would be dishonorable to his uncle's memory. It was clearly
his duty to resist these blasted satraps of capitalists; he was
providentially selected for the purpose--a village Hampden to withstand
the tyrant. “And I reckon that shark of a lawyer knew all about it when
he was gettin' off that 'purp stuff' about people's sympathies with the
girl,” said Rice belligerently. “Contest the will, would he? Why, if we
caught that Brown with a finger in the pie we'd just whip up the boys on
this Ledge and lynch him. You hang on to that three acres and the garden
patch of your forefathers, sonny, and we'll see you through!”

Nevertheless, it was with some misgivings that Wells consented that
his three partners should actually accompany him and see him put in
peaceable possession of his inheritance. His instinct told him that
there would be no contest of the will, and still less any opposition
on the part of the objectionable relative, Brown. When the wagon
which contained his personal effects and the few articles of furniture
necessary for his occupancy of the cabin arrived, the exaggerated
swagger which his companions had put on in their passage through the
settlement gave way to a pastoral indolence, equally half real, half
affected. Lying on their backs under a buckeye, they permitted Rice to
voice the general sentiment. “There's a suthin' soothin' and dreamy in
this kind o' life, Jacksey, and we'll make a point of comin' here for a
couple of days every two weeks to lend you a hand; it will be a mighty
good change from our nigger work on the claim.”

In spite of this assurance, and the fact that they had voluntarily come
to help him put the place in order, they did very little beyond lending
a cheering expression of unqualified praise and unstinted advice. At the
end of four hours' weeding and trimming the boundaries of the garden,
they unanimously gave their opinion that it would be more systematic for
him to employ Chinese labor at once.

“You see,” said Ned Wyngate, “the Chinese naturally take to this kind o'
business. Why, you can't take up a china plate or saucer but you see
'em pictured there working at jobs like this, and they kin live on green
things and rice that cost nothin', and chickens. You'll keep chickens,
of course.”

Jackson thought that his hands would be full enough with the garden, but
he meekly assented.

“I'll get a pair--you only want two to begin with,” continued Wyngate
cheerfully, “and in a month or two you've got all you want, and eggs
enough for market. On second thoughts, I don't know whether you hadn't
better begin with eggs first. That is, you borry some eggs from one
man and a hen from another. Then you set 'em, and when the chickens are
hatched out you just return the hen to the second man, and the eggs,
when your chickens begin to lay, to the first man, and you've got your
chickens for nothing--and there you are.”

This ingenious proposition, which was delivered on the last slope of
the domain, where the partners were lying exhausted from their work, was
broken in upon by the appearance of a small boy, barefooted, sunburnt,
and tow-headed, who, after a moment's hurried scrutiny of the group,
threw a letter with unerring precision into the lap of Jackson Wells,
and then fled precipitately. Jackson instinctively suspected he was
connected with the outrage on his fence and gate-post, but as he had
avoided telling his partners of the incident, fearing to increase their
belligerent attitude, he felt now an awkward consciousness mingled with
his indignation as he broke the seal and read as follows:--


SIR,--This is to inform you that although you have got hold of the
property by underhanded and sneaking ways, you ain't no right to touch
or lay your vile hands on the Cherokee Rose alongside the house, nor on
the Giant of Battles, nor on the Maiden's Pride by the gate--the same
being the property of Miss Jocelinda Wells, and planted by her, under
the penalty of the Law. And if you, or any of your gang of ruffians,
touches it or them, or any thereof, or don't deliver it up when called
for in good order, you will be persecuted by them.

AVENGER.


It is to be feared that Jackson would have suppressed this also, but the
keen eyes of his partners, excited by the abruptness of the messenger,
were upon him. He smiled feebly, and laid the letter before them. But
he was unprepared for their exaggerated indignation, and with difficulty
restrained them from dashing off in the direction of the vanished
herald. “And what could you do?” he said. “The boy's only a messenger.”

“I'll get at that d----d skunk Brown, who's back of him,” said Dexter
Rice.

“And what then?” persisted Jackson, with a certain show of independence.
“If this stuff belongs to the girl, I'm not certain I shan't give them
up without any fuss. Lord! I want nothing but what the old man left
me--and certainly nothing of HERS.”

Here Ned Wyngate was heard to murmur that Jackson was one of those
men who would lie down and let coyotes crawl over him if they first
presented a girl's visiting card, but he was stopped by Rice demanding
paper and pencil. The former being torn from a memorandum book, and a
stub of the latter produced from another pocket, he wrote as follows:--


SIR,--In reply to the hogwash you have kindly exuded in your letter of
to-day, I have to inform you that you can have what you ask for Miss
Wells, and perhaps a trifle on your own account, by calling this
afternoon on--Yours truly--


“Now, sign it,” continued Rice, handing him the pencil.

“But this will look as if we were angry and wanted to keep the plants,”
 protested Wells.

“Never you mind, sonny, but sign! Leave the rest to your partners,
and when you lay your head on your pillow to-night return thanks to an
overruling Providence for providing you with the right gang of ruffians
to look after you!”

Wells signed reluctantly, and Wyngate offered to find a Chinaman in the
gulch who would take the missive. “And being a Chinaman, Brown can do
any cussin' or buck talk THROUGH him!” he added.

The afternoon wore on; the tall Douglas pines near the water pools
wheeled their long shadows round and halfway up the slope, and the sun
began to peer into the faces of the reclining men. Subtle odors of mint
and southern-wood, stragglers from the garden, bruised by their limbs,
replaced the fumes of their smoked-out pipes, and the hammers of the
woodpeckers were busy in the grove as they lay lazily nibbling the
fragrant leaves like peaceful ruminants. Then came the sound of
approaching wheels along the invisible highway beyond the buckeyes,
and then a halt and silence. Rice rose slowly, bright pin points in the
pupils of his gray eyes.

“Bringin' a wagon with him to tote the hull shanty away,” suggested
Wyngate.

“Or fetched his own ambulance,” said Briggs.

Nevertheless, after a pause, the wheels presently rolled away again.

“We'd better go and meet him at the gate,” said Rice, hitching his
revolver holster nearer his hip. “That wagon stopped long enough to put
down three or four men.”

They walked leisurely but silently to the gate. It is probable that none
of them believed in a serious collision, but now the prospect had enough
possibility in it to quicken their pulses. They reached the gate. But it
was still closed; the road beyond it empty.

“Mebbe they've sneaked round to the cabin,” said Briggs, “and are
holdin' it inside.”

They were turning quickly in that direction, when Wyngate said,
“Hush!--some one's there in the brush under the buckeyes.”

They listened; there was a faint rustling in the shadows.

“Come out o' that, Brown--into the open. Don't be shy,” called out Rice
in cheerful irony. “We're waitin' for ye.”

But Briggs, who was nearest the wood, here suddenly uttered an
exclamation,--“B'gosh!” and fell back, open-mouthed, upon his
companions. They too, in another moment, broke into a feeble laugh, and
lapsed against each other in sheepish silence. For a very pretty girl,
handsomely dressed, swept out of the wood and advanced towards them.

Even at any time she would have been an enchanting vision to these men,
but in the glow of exercise and sparkle of anger she was bewildering.
Her wonderful hair, the color of freshly hewn redwood, had escaped from
her hat in her passage through the underbrush, and even as she swept
down upon them in her majesty she was jabbing a hairpin into it with a
dexterous feminine hand.

The three partners turned quite the color of her hair; Jackson Wells
alone remained white and rigid. She came on, her very short upper lip
showing her white teeth with her panting breath.

Rice was first to speak. “I beg--your pardon, Miss--I thought it was
Brown--you know,” he stammered.

But she only turned a blighting brown eye on the culprit, curled her
short lip till it almost vanished in her scornful nostrils, drew her
skirt aside with a jerk, and continued her way straight to Jackson
Wells, where she halted.

“We did not know you were--here alone,” he said apologetically.

“Thought I was afraid to come alone, didn't you? Well, you see, I'm not.
There!” She made another dive at her hat and hair, and brought the hat
down wickedly over her eyebrows. “Gimme my plants.”

Jackson had been astonished. He would have scarcely recognized in this
willful beauty the red-haired girl whom he had boyishly hated, and with
whom he had often quarreled. But there was a recollection--and with that
recollection came an instinct of habit. He looked her squarely in the
face, and, to the horror of his partners, said, “Say please!”

They had expected to see him fall, smitten with the hairpin! But she
only stopped, and then in bitter irony said, “Please, Mr. Jackson
Wells.”

“I haven't dug them up yet--and it would serve you just right if I
made you get them for yourself. But perhaps my friends here might help
you--if you were civil.”

The three partners seized spades and hoes and rushed forward eagerly.
“Only show us what you want,” they said in one voice. The young girl
stared at them, and at Jackson. Then with swift determination she turned
her back scornfully upon him, and with a dazzling smile which reduced
the three men to absolute idiocy, said to the others, “I'll show YOU,”
 and marched away to the cabin.

“Ye mustn't mind Jacksey,” said Rice, sycophantically edging to her
side, “he's so cut up with losin' your father that he loved like a son,
he isn't himself, and don't seem to know whether to ante up or pass out.
And as for yourself, Miss--why--What was it he was sayin' only just as
the young lady came?” he added, turning abruptly to Wyngate.

“Everything that cousin Josey planted with her own hands must be took up
carefully and sent back--even though it's killin' me to part with it,”
 quoted Wyngate unblushingly, as he slouched along on the other side.

Miss Wells's eyes glared at them, though her mouth still smiled
ravishingly. “I'm sure I'm troubling you.”

In a few moments the plants were dug up and carefully laid together;
indeed, the servile Briggs had added a few that she had not indicated.

“Would you mind bringing them as far as the buggy that's coming down
the hill?” she said, pointing to a buggy driven by a small boy which
was slowly approaching the gate. The men tenderly lifted the uprooted
plants, and proceeded solemnly, Miss Wells bringing up the rear, towards
the gate, where Jackson Wells was still surlily lounging.

They passed out first. Miss Wells lingered for an instant, and then
advancing her beautiful but audacious face within an inch of Jackson's,
hissed out, “Make-believe! and hypocrite!”

“Cross-patch and sauce-box!” returned Jackson readily, still under the
malign influence of his boyish past, as she flounced away.

Presently he heard the buggy rattle away with his persecutor. But his
partners still lingered on the road in earnest conversation, and when
they did return it was with a singular awkwardness and embarrassment,
which he naturally put down to a guilty consciousness of their foolish
weakness in succumbing to the girl's demands.

But he was a little surprised when Dexter Rice approached him gloomily.
“Of course,” he began, “it ain't no call of ours to interfere in family
affairs, and you've a right to keep 'em to yourself, but if you'd been
fair and square and above board in what you got off on us about this
per--”

“What do you mean?” demanded the astonished Wells.

“Well--callin' her a 'red-haired gal.'”

“Well--she is a red-haired girl!” said Wells impatiently.

“A man,” continued Rice pityingly, “that is so prejudiced as to apply
such language to a beautiful orphan--torn with grief at the loss of a
beloved but d----d misconstruing parent--merely because she begs a few
vegetables out of his potato patch, ain't to be reasoned with. But when
you come to look at this thing by and large, and as a fa'r-minded man,
sonny, you'll agree with us that the sooner you make terms with her the
better. Considerin' your interest, Jacksey,--let alone the claims of
humanity,--we've concluded to withdraw from here until this thing is
settled. She's sort o' mixed us up with your feelings agin her, and
naturally supposed we object to the color of her hair! and bein' a
penniless orphan, rejected by her relations”--

“What stuff are you talking?” burst in Jackson. “Why, YOU saw she
treated you better than she did me.”

“Steady! There you go with that temper of yours that frightened the
girl! Of course she could see that WE were fa'r-minded men, accustomed
to the ways of society, and not upset by the visit of a lady, or the
givin' up of a few green sticks! But let that slide! We're goin' back
home to-night, sonny, and when you've thought this thing over and are
straightened up and get your right bearin's, we'll stand by you as
before. We'll put a man on to do your work on the Ledge, so ye needn't
worry about that.”

They were quite firm in this decision,--however absurd or obscure their
conclusions,--and Jackson, after his first flash of indignation, felt
a certain relief in their departure. But strangely enough, while he had
hesitated about keeping the property when they were violently in favor
of it, he now felt he was right in retaining it against their advice to
compromise. The sentimental idea had vanished with his recognition of
his hateful cousin in the role of the injured orphan. And for the same
odd reason her prettiness only increased his resentment. He was not
deceived,--it was the same capricious, willful, red-haired girl.

The next day he set himself to work with that dogged steadiness that
belonged to his simple nature, and which had endeared him to his
partners. He set half a dozen Chinamen to work, and followed, although
apparently directing, their methods. The great difficulty was to
restrain and control the excessive vegetation, and he matched the small
economies of the Chinese against the opulence of the Californian soil.
The “garden patch” prospered; the neighbors spoke well of it and of
him. But Jackson knew that this fierce harvest of early spring was to be
followed by the sterility of the dry season, and that irrigation could
alone make his work profitable in the end. He brought a pump to force
the water from the little stream at the foot of the slope to the top,
and allowed it to flow back through parallel trenches. Again Buckeye
applauded! Only the gloomy barkeeper shook his head. “The moment you get
that thing to pay, Mr. Wells, you'll find the hand of Brown, somewhere,
getting ready to squeeze it dry!”

But Jackson Wells did not trouble himself about Brown, whom he scarcely
knew. Once indeed, while trenching the slope, he was conscious that he
was watched by two men from the opposite bank; but they were apparently
satisfied by their scrutiny, and turned away. Still less did he concern
himself with the movements of his cousin, who once or twice passed him
superciliously in her buggy on the road. Again, she met him as one of
a cavalcade of riders, mounted on a handsome but ill-tempered mustang,
which she was managing with an ill-temper and grace equal to the
brute's, to the alternate delight and terror of her cavalier. He could
see that she had been petted and spoiled by her new guardian and his
friends far beyond his conception. But why she should grudge him the
little garden and the pastoral life for which she was so unsuited,
puzzled him greatly.

One afternoon he was working near the road, when he was startled by
an outcry from his Chinese laborers, their rapid dispersal from the
strawberry beds where they were working, the splintering crash of his
fence rails, and a commotion among the buckeyes. Furious at what seemed
to him one of the usual wanton attacks upon coolie labor, he seized
his pick and ran to their assistance. But he was surprised to find
Jocelinda's mustang caught by the saddle and struggling between two
trees, and its unfortunate mistress lying upon the strawberry bed.
Shocked but cool-headed, Jackson released the horse first, who was
lashing out and destroying everything within his reach, and then turned
to his cousin. But she had already lifted herself to her elbow, and
with a trickle of blood and mud on one fair cheek was surveying him
scornfully under her tumbled hair and hanging hat.

“You don't suppose I was trespassing on your wretched patch again, do
you?” she said in a voice she was trying to keep from breaking. “It was
that brute--who bolted.”

“I don't suppose you were bullying ME this time,” he said, “but you were
YOUR HORSE--or it wouldn't have happened. Are you hurt?”

She tried to move; he offered her his hand, but she shied from it and
struggled to her feet. She took a step forward--but limped.

“If you don't want my arm, let me call a Chinaman,” he suggested.

She glared at him. “If you do I'll scream!” she said in a low voice, and
he knew she would. But at the same moment her face whitened, at which he
slipped his arm under hers in a dexterous, business-like way, so as to
support her weight. Then her hat got askew, and down came a long braid
over his shoulder. He remembered it of old, only it was darker than then
and two or three feet longer.

“If you could manage to limp as far as the gate and sit down on the
bank, I'd get your horse for you,” he said. “I hitched it to a sapling.”

“I saw you did--before you even offered to help me,” she said
scornfully.

“The horse would have got away--YOU couldn't.”

“If you only knew how I hated you,” she said, with a white face, but a
trembling lip.

“I don't see how that would make things any better,” he said. “Better
wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, and you've been rubbing your
nose in my strawberry bed.”

She snatched his proffered handkerchief suddenly, applied it to her
face, and said: “I suppose it looks dreadful.”

“Like a pig's,” he returned cheerfully.

She walked a little more firmly after this, until they reached the gate.
He seated her on the bank, and went back for the mustang. That beautiful
brute, astounded and sore from its contact with the top rail and
brambles, was cowed and subdued as he led it back.

She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly disentangling
two stinging tears from her long lashes, before she threw back his
handkerchief. Her sprained ankle obliged him to lift her into the saddle
and adjust her little shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it
was still smaller. “You used to ride astride,” he said, a flood of
recollection coming over him, “and it's much safer with your temper and
that brute.”

“And you,” she said in a lower voice, “used to be”--But the rest of her
sentence was lost in the switch of the whip and the jump of her horse,
but he thought the word was “kinder.”

Perhaps this was why, after he watched her canter away, he went back to
the garden, and from the bruised and trampled strawberry bed gathered
a small basket of the finest fruit, covered them with leaves, added a
paper with the highly ingenious witticism, “Picked up with you,” and
sent them to her by one of the Chinamen. Her forcible entry moved
Li Sing, his foreman, also chief laundryman to the settlement, to
reminiscences:

“Me heap knew Missy Wells and ole man, who go dead. Ole man allee
time make chin music to Missy. Allee time jaw jaw--allee time make
lows--allee time cuttee up Missy! Plenty time lockee up Missy topside
house; no can walkee--no can talkee--no hab got--how can get?--must
washee washee allee same Chinaman. Ole man go dead--Missy all lightee
now. Plenty fun. Plenty stay in Blown's big house, top-side hill; Blown
first-chop man.”

Had he inquired he might have found this pagan testimony, for once,
corroborated by the Christian neighbors.

But another incident drove all this from his mind. The little
stream--the life blood of his garden--ran dry! Inquiry showed that it
had been diverted two miles away into Brown's ditch! Wells's indignant
protest elicited a formal reply from Brown, stating that he owned the
adjacent mining claims, and reminding him that mining rights to water
took precedence of the agricultural claim, but offering, by way of
compensation, to purchase the land thus made useless and sterile.
Jackson suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end,
had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land,
equally useless--as his uncle had proved--for mining purposes? Could it
be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused,
rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right!
He was a trespasser on his cousin's heritage--there was no luck in
it--he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding
gracefully as he might, he must back down now, and she would never know
his first real feelings. Even now he would make over the property to
her as a free gift. But his partners had advanced him money from their
scanty means to plant and work it. He believed that an appeal to their
feelings would persuade them to forego even that, but he shrank even
more from confessing his defeat to THEM than to her.

He had little heart in his labors that day, and dismissed the Chinamen
early. He again examined his uncle's old mining claim on the top of
the slope, but was satisfied that it had been a hopeless enterprise
and wisely abandoned. It was sunset when he stood under the buckeyes,
gloomily looking at the glow fade out of the west, as it had out of his
boyish hopes. He had grown to like the place. It was the hour, too, when
the few flowers he had cultivated gave back their pleasant odors, as if
grateful for his care. And then he heard his name called.

It was his cousin, standing a few yards from him in evident hesitation.
She was quite pale, and for a moment he thought she was still suffering
from her fall, until he saw in her nervous, half-embarrassed manner that
it had no physical cause. Her old audacity and anger seemed gone, yet
there was a queer determination in her pretty brows.

“Good-evening,” he said.

She did not return his greeting, but pulling uneasily at her glove, said
hesitatingly: “Uncle has asked you to sell him this land?”

“Yes.”

“Well--don't!” she burst out abruptly.

He stared at her.

“Oh, I'm not trying to keep you here,” she went on, flashing back into
her old temper; “so you needn't stare like that. I say, 'Don't,' because
it ain't right, it ain't fair.”

“Why, he's left me no alternative,” he said.

“That's just it--that's why it's mean and low. I don't care if he is our
uncle.”

Jackson was bewildered and shocked.

“I know it's horrid to say it,” she said, with a white face; “but it's
horrider to keep it in! Oh, Jack! when we were little, and used to fight
and quarrel, I never was mean--was I? I never was underhanded--was I?
I never lied--did I? And I can't lie now. Jack,” she looked hurriedly
around her, “HE wants to get hold of the land--HE thinks there's gold in
the slope and bank by the stream. He says dad was a fool to have located
his claim so high up. Jack! did you ever prospect the bank?”

A dawning of intelligence came upon Jackson. “No,” he said; “but,” he
added bitterly, “what's the use? He owns the water now,--I couldn't work
it.”

“But, Jack, IF you found the color, this would be a MINING claim! You
could claim the water right; and, as it's your land, your claim would be
first!”

Jackson was startled. “Yes, IF I found the color.”

“You WOULD find it.”

“WOULD?”

“Yes! I DID--on the sly! Yesterday morning on your slope by the stream,
when no one was up! I washed a panful and got that.” She took a piece of
tissue paper from her pocket, opened it, and shook into her little palm
three tiny pin points of gold.

“And that was your own idea, Jossy?”

“Yes!”

“Your very own?”

“Honest Injin!”

“Wish you may die?”

“True, O King!”

He opened his arms, and they mutually embraced. Then they separated,
taking hold of each other's hands solemnly, and falling back until they
were at arm's length. Then they slowly extended their arms sideways at
full length, until this action naturally brought their faces and lips
together. They did this with the utmost gravity three times, and then
embraced again, rocking on pivoted feet like a metronome. Alas! it was
no momentary inspiration. The most casual and indifferent observer
could see that it was the result of long previous practice and shameless
experience. And as such--it was a revelation and an explanation.


*****

“I always suspected that Jackson was playin' us about that red-haired
cousin,” said Rice two weeks later; “but I can't swallow that purp stuff
about her puttin' him up to that dodge about a new gold discovery on
a fresh claim, just to knock out Brown. No, sir. He found that gold in
openin' these irrigatin' trenches,--the usual nigger luck, findin' what
you're not lookin' arter.”

“Well, we can't complain, for he's offered to work it on shares with
us,” said Briggs.

“Yes--until he's ready to take in another partner.”

“Not--Brown?” said his horrified companions.

“No!--but Brown's adopted daughter--that red-haired cousin!”




THE REINCARNATION OF SMITH


The extravagant supper party by which Mr. James Farendell celebrated the
last day of his bachelorhood was protracted so far into the night,
that the last guest who parted from him at the door of the principal
Sacramento restaurant was for a moment impressed with the belief that
a certain ruddy glow in the sky was already the dawn. But Mr. Farendell
had kept his head clear enough to recognize it as the light of some
burning building in a remote business district, a not infrequent
occurrence in the dry season. When he had dismissed his guest he turned
away in that direction for further information. His own counting-house
was not in that immediate neighborhood, but Sacramento had been once
before visited by a rapid and far-sweeping conflagration, and it
behooved him to be on the alert even on this night of festivity.

Perhaps also a certain anxiety arose out of the occasion. He was to be
married to-morrow to the widow of his late partner, and the
marriage, besides being an attractive one, would settle many business
difficulties. He had been a fortunate man, but, like many more fortunate
men, was not blind to the possibilities of a change of luck. The death
of his partner in a successful business had at first seemed to betoken
that change, but his successful, though hasty, courtship of the
inexperienced widow had restored his chances without greatly shocking
the decorum of a pioneer community. Nevertheless, he was not a contented
man, and hardly a determined--although an energetic one.

A walk of a few moments brought him to the levee of the river,--a
favored district, where his counting-house, with many others, was
conveniently situated. In these early days only a few of these buildings
could be said to be permanent,--fire and flood perpetually threatened
them. They were merely temporary structures of wood, or in the case
of Mr. Farendell's office, a shell of corrugated iron, sheathing
a one-storied wooden frame, more or less elaborate in its interior
decorations. By the time he had reached it, the distant fire had
increased. On his way he had met and recognized many of his business
acquaintances hurrying thither,--some to save their own property, or
to assist the imperfectly equipped volunteer fire department in their
unselfish labors. It was probably Mr. Farendell's peculiar preoccupation
on that particular night which had prevented his joining in their
brotherly zeal.

He unlocked the iron door, and lit the hanging lamp that was used in
all-night sittings on steamer days. It revealed a smartly furnished
office, with a high desk for his clerks, and a smaller one for himself
in one corner. In the centre of the wall stood a large safe. This he
also unlocked and took out a few important books, as well as a small
drawer containing gold coin and dust to the amount of about five hundred
dollars, the large balance having been deposited in bank on the previous
day. The act was only precautionary, as he did not exhibit any haste in
removing them to a place of safety, and remained meditatively absorbed
in looking over a packet of papers taken from the same drawer. The
closely shuttered building, almost hermetically sealed against light,
and perhaps sound, prevented his observing the steadily increasing light
of the conflagration, or hearing the nearer tumult of the firemen, and
the invasion of his quiet district by other equally solicitous tenants.
The papers seemed also to possess some importance, for, the stillness
being suddenly broken by the turning of the handle of the heavy door he
had just closed, and its opening with difficulty, his first act was
to hurriedly conceal them, without apparently paying a thought to the
exposed gold before him. And his expression and attitude in facing
round towards the door was quite as much of nervous secretiveness as of
indignation at the interruption.

Yet the intruder appeared, though singular, by no means formidable. He
was a man slightly past the middle age, with a thin face, hollowed at
the cheeks and temples as if by illness or asceticism, and a grayish
beard that encircled his throat like a soiled worsted “comforter” below
his clean-shaven chin and mouth. His manner was slow and methodical, and
even when he shot the bolt of the door behind him, the act did not seem
aggressive. Nevertheless Mr. Farendell half rose with his hand on
his pistol-pocket, but the stranger merely lifted his own hand with
a gesture of indifferent warning, and, drawing a chair towards him,
dropped into it deliberately.

Mr. Farendell's angry stare changed suddenly to one of surprised
recognition. “Josh Scranton,” he said hesitatingly.

“I reckon,” responded the stranger slowly. “That's the name I allus
bore, and YOU called yourself Farendell. Well, we ain't seen each other
sens the spring o' '50, when ye left me lying nigh petered out with
chills and fever on the Stanislaus River, and sold the claim that me and
Duffy worked under our very feet, and skedaddled for 'Frisco!”

“I only exercised my right as principal owner, and to secure my
advances,” began the late Mr. Farendell sharply.

But again the thin hand was raised, this time with a slow, scornful
waiving of any explanations. “It ain't that in partickler that I've kem
to see ye for to-night,” said the stranger slowly, “nor it ain't about
your takin' the name o' 'Farendell,' that friend o' yours who died on
the passage here with ye, and whose papers ye borrowed! Nor it ain't
on account o' that wife of yours ye left behind in Missouri, and whose
letters you never answered. It's them things all together--and suthin'
else!”

“What the d---l do you want, then?” said Farendell, with a desperate
directness that was, however, a tacit confession of the truth of these
accusations.

“Yer allowin' that ye'll get married tomorrow?” said Scranton slowly.

“Yes, and be d----d to you,” said Farendell fiercely.

“Yer NOT,” returned Scranton. “Not if I knows it. Yer goin' to climb
down. Yer goin' to get up and get! Yer goin' to step down and out! Yer
goin' to shut up your desk and your books and this hull consarn inside
of an hour, and vamose the ranch. Arter an hour from now thar won't be
any Mr. Farendell, and no weddin' to-morrow.”

“If that's your game--perhaps you'd like to murder me at once?” said
Farendell with a shifting eye, as his hand again moved towards his
revolver.

But again the thin hand of the stranger was also lifted. “We ain't in
the business o' murderin' or bein' murdered, or we might hev kem here
together, me and Duffy. Now if anything happens to me Duffy will be
left, and HE'S got the proofs.”

Farendell seemed to recognize the fact with the same directness. “That's
it, is it?” he said bluntly. “Well, how much do you want? Only, I warn
you that I haven't much to give.”

“Wotever you've got, if it was millions, it ain't enough to buy us up,
and ye ought to know that by this time,” responded Scranton, with
a momentary flash in his eyes. But the next moment his previous
passionless deliberation returned, and leaning his arm on the desk of
the man before him he picked up a paperweight carelessly and turned it
over as he said slowly, “The fact is, Mr. Farendell, you've been making
us, me and Duffy, tired. We've bin watchin' you and your doin's, lyin'
low and sayin' nothin', till we concluded that it was about time you
handed in your checks and left the board. We ain't wanted nothin' of
ye, we ain't begrudged ye nothin', but we've allowed that this yer thing
must stop.”

“And what if I refuse?” said Farendell.

“Thar'll be some cussin' and a big row from YOU, I kalkilate--and maybe
some fightin' all round,” said Scranton dispassionately. “But it will be
all the same in the end. The hull thing will come out, and you'll hev
to slide just the same. T'otherwise, ef ye slide out NOW, it's without a
row.”

“And do you suppose a business man like me can disappear without a fuss
over it?” said Farendell angrily. “Are you mad?”

“I reckon the hole YOU'LL make kin be filled up,” said Scranton dryly.
“But ef ye go NOW, you won't be bothered by the fuss, while if you stay
you'll have to face the music, and go too!”

Farendell was silent. Possibly the truth of this had long since been
borne upon him. No one but himself knew the incessant strain of these
years of evasion and concealment, and how he often had been near to
some such desperate culmination. The sacrifice offered to him was not,
therefore, so great as it might have seemed. The knowledge of this
might have given him a momentary superiority over his antagonist had
Scranton's motive been a purely selfish or malignant one, but as it was
not, and as he may have had some instinctive idea of Farendell's feeling
also, it made his ultimatum appear the more passionless and fateful.
And it was this quality which perhaps caused Farendell to burst out with
desperate abruptness,--

“What in h-ll ever put you up to this!”

Scranton folded his arms upon Farendell's desk, and slowly wiping his
clean jaw with one hand, repeated deliberately, “Wall--I reckon I told
ye that before! You've been making us--me and Duffy--tired!” He paused
for a moment, and then, rising abruptly, with a careless gesture towards
the uncovered tray of gold, said, “Come! ye kin take enuff o' that to
get away with; the less ye take, though, the less likely you'll be 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2535