AS WE FORGIVE MEN THEIR TRESPASSES.
He came slowly down the ravine, still heavy with shadows, while the sun
was shining above him, and on the bed of the river below. The tents were
deserted and still, the men were already at work, and the hum of voices
and labor came up the stream. The sound brought back his thoughts in a
moment, to the bare reality of his position. If his father had not been
persuaded to come to California, and his mother’s anxious fears made
him a partner in the scheme, he would now have been lounging about the
old homestead, thinking himself very useful and industrious if he kept
the vegetable garden in order, and mended broken fences, glad enough to
escape from any thing that seemed like work, for a game of ball, or a
blackberry expedition.
Now he was free from all restraint as if he had been a man; the
undisputed possessor of almost two thousand dollars. He hurried towards
the tent, to look at this accumulated treasure, not with any selfish,
miserly feeling, but to find out the exact amount, and plan how he could
best reach home with it. In the short distance he had still to go, his
quick thoughts had shaped out a great deal for the future. He would go
home by the steamer, and be the first to tell his mother the sad news,
for he knew she could bear it better in the joy of his return.—There
would still be money enough left to buy back the lost land they had
parted with, and the house, and something to get started with. He could
manage a little farm, if not very well at first, after a few years, with
Squire Merrill’s advice, and his mother’s help. “Mother was as good as a
man, any day,” he said to himself.
But then how much gold there was yet in California, and every one said
they had had wonderful luck. Now he was here, wouldn’t it be best to stay
and work another season, and go home rich! How the people would look up
to him, and mother could have the whole farm. He might as well after all
that trouble!
It was a dazzling temptation, home and love, comfort and peace,—balanced
against the chances of being rich while yet a boy; and a long life of
ease and prosperity before him! His step became slower—it was very hard
to decide. How much more he could do for the girls, the tempter said,
putting on the most generous disguise; and his mother should live without
having to lift her hands to work. Once more his mother stood between him
and an evil choice. How often had she told him, that industry made people
happy, not idleness; that it kept away bad thoughts, and left no time for
them to grow into bad actions. She would never be satisfied to fold her
hands, and live a useless life. He knew that if she could read what was
going on in his mind, she would not think he ought even to hesitate. God
had so far taken care of him, and prospered him, because he was doing his
duty. That duty was over now, and another,—to return to the mother who
had so unselfishly devoted him to it, and make her happy,—came plainly
before him.
Yes, he had decided, he would go home. The empty tent seemed to send a
chill over him, as he went into it. The silence spoke louder than words,
that his father was gone for ever. The gold he had hoarded was useless
now, it could not purchase even one hour’s consciousness at the last, to
send messages of love to his family, to ask the pardon of Heaven for a
misspent life. It was a mute commentary on the fearful question—
_What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul?_
_Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?_
Something like a dim understanding of this came into his son’s mind, as
he stooped down to scrape away the sand from under the edge of the tent,
where his father had concealed his gains. It was a precaution very few
of the miners took, and the strangest thing in all their peculiar life
was, perhaps, the respect they all observed towards any thing claimed
by another person. No matter how high a price was paid for the common,
indispensable tools and cooking utensils, or how much a man might be in
want of them, the owner could leave his claim for days, and come back
to find them untouched. So with the gold. It was often only rolled up
in their blankets, or left in some cup or pan, unguarded, except by
the strict law, made and enforced among themselves. Death was usually
the instant and only penalty, before the Californians could claim the
protection of State laws.
Colcord’s thoroughly mean, avaricious disposition would not trust to
this, and Mr. Gilman, growing more miserly every day after he left, went
on concealing the gold, in the same way. Sam had never even disturbed it
before, but he saw his father lift out the old broken kettle, and pass
the shining scales through his hands, only the night before he was taken
sick. It yielded readily to his grasp, for it was scarcely covered by
the light soil. Sam would have noticed that the sand was smoothed less
carefully than usual by the sick man’s tremulous hands, before this,
but Mr. Gilman always laid down by his treasure, and one corner of the
blanket had covered the place till now. No matter—all precaution was
useless—_it was empty_!
Sam could not believe the gold was all gone at first. He thought it might
have been hidden in the sand, or thrown out accidentally, and mixed with
it. He snatched up the knife again, and dug down deeper still, but a few
scattering flakes was all he found. His father’s ravings about its being
stolen flashed across his mind; but he knew that was only the wildness
of fever, for he had seen it put there himself. Suddenly he noticed that
the knife he still held was not his own, or his father’s. He had found
it lying there, and he had seen it before. He knew it in a moment, and
could have sworn to it in any court in the land. The short, slightly
curved blade, the extreme point snapped off,—the heavy bone handle,—he
had seen Colcord display and boast of that knife too often, not to know
it again. He recollected the stealthy footsteps and the man’s shadow
the night before, at the same instant. Colcord must have heard that his
father could not live, and he knew only too well where to find all they
possessed. Sam felt that he had slept nearly an hour, for he remembered
the moon was almost down when he roused himself, and in this time, not
content with living ruin, Colcord had _robbed the dead_!
Mr. Gilman’s ravings had been a prophecy. “It was all gone,” every
dollar, and with it the bright pictures of home and a comfortable
independence. Sam felt this with a dreadful heart-sinking, as he dropped
the knife and rushed out upon the beach. His first impulse was to call
out his loss, and pursue the thief. No one was near him at the moment,
and he remembered how many hours Colcord had been gone, and what would be
his fate if he was overtaken by these unscrupulous dealers of justice,
the miners.
Every thing about the theft was so aggravated, they would be sure to hang
him on the spot,—others had been for even less offences, and yet Sam knew
that there was but one crime that made this less than murder. The divine
law has ordained life to be taken only for life.
Oh, it was very hard—too hard for him to bear—whichever way he turned! He
went back to the tent and sat and brooded over every thing, feeling that
he should go crazy; and then he started up, and hurried away to the most
desolate spot he could find, lest he should be tempted to the revenge
that was boiling up in his mind. And there he laid hours and hours, away
from every human sight and sound, battling with himself, until he looked
up despairingly to the sky above him, and its peaceful serenity fell
like a thought of God and heaven upon the tumult of his mind.
Passion and revenge, hate and despair were arrested by one thought.
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” A moment of some
Sunday’s lesson, or it might have been only the text to a sermon he had
not listened to at the time; no matter how he had learned it, he knew
that it was as much to be regarded as the command, “thou shalt not kill.”
It was listened to then, but many a time afterwards the struggle came up
again, and the self-conquest grew harder and harder.
It was well for him that the miners did not trouble themselves to pry
into each other’s affairs, and that Sam knew too little of any of them,
to ask or expect their advice. They thought he was a sensible little
fellow to keep on at work; and called him a “queer stick,” for not
wasting what he made as they did. He was as industrious as ever, but grew
sullen and moody. How could he help it? he was old before his time; the
very strength of will that made him without his knowing it a moral hero,
in keeping the secret of Colcord’s villany, and working on when many a
man would have given up discouraged, was a proof of it. It was all there,
a natural trait of character, but he might have grown up without its
being called out in less eventful life.
Sam toiled on at the nearly exhausted claim, for he had not the means to
secure a better one, until the men began to talk of emigrating, for the
rainy season, to the dry diggings. It was very discouraging to work so
very, very hard, and deny himself every thing, with so little success.
Many a night what he had made seemed hardly worth adding to his little
stock. The disappointed men on the bar drank and gamed to throw off their
troubles, and he was often tempted to do the same. Once he raised the
glass to his very lips,—but his promise was stronger than the wish to
drink it; and more than once, night after night that miserable winter, he
lingered in the large gaming tent, made alluring by light, and warmth,
and jovial choruses, and watched the glittering piles grow larger and
higher, to be swept off by some eager looker-on. It seemed so easy to
make up losses, by a single throw of the dice, or lucky turn of the
cards. He would not think of those who were ruined by the same throw,
then, but steal off through the dark wet night to his own tent, calling
himself a fool for hesitating at the risk, and resolved to play the
desperate stake when another evening came.
But even if he could have forgotten the warning of his father’s example,
he knew his mother never would receive the wages of sin, and it was for
her, only for her, he cared to hoard.
He often looked back to that dismal and pitied winter himself. Some of
the miners, from Larkin’s Bar, prepared to leave for the States, not
many weeks after he began the world again, contented with what they had
made. By one of them Sam wrote a short desponding letter home, trying to
soften the news of his father’s death, and their new misfortune; and then
he left that grave in the wilderness, and followed the miners to their
winter encampment.
The heavy rains made the roads almost impassable before they reached
it, and more than one died, as Mr. Gilman had done, from fatigue and
exposure. Death in many forms was no longer a strange sight.
I know it is a sad thing to read of these trials happening to one so
young, and I will not dwell on the dark picture. Those who are reading
it in their pleasant homes, where want, and care, and hardships are only
heard of, cannot even understand all the weariness and temptation of
that winter to the young exile. But they can thank our Heavenly Father
that their paths are made full of pleasantness, and be more grateful
for the comforts around them. There were many days when the steady fall
of rain,—coming not in showers but like a heavy column,—deluged and
obscured every thing, and left not even the refuge of hard work, from
home-sickness, and heart-sickness. And then prospects brightened, and
hope came back with the sunshine, as the boy worked cheerfully all day
long, untouched by the discontent and, worse than all, sickness around
him. So the winter wore away, darkness and clouds, hope and brighter days
coming and going, to many an exile beside our young miner, through the
dry diggings of California.