NEW PROSPECTS.
“My dear, _dear_ child” (Sam could almost hear his mother say these
precious words), “I am writing to you to-night, though our Heavenly
Father only can tell whether you will ever know from this how my heart
aches for you. I have just got your letter with its dreadful news, but
I feel more for the poor girls and for you than I do for myself. I am
used to trouble. I don’t mean to murmur, but it seems to me as if I’d had
hardly any thing else since my father and mother died. God forgive me!
when my children have been such a comfort to me, you especially, Sam.
“I know it’s all right; but if I could only have been with your poor
father and taken care of him, if he was only buried here among his own
people, where I could go and see his grave sometimes, it seems as if I
could submit. But I know you did every thing, Sam. I knew you would when
I let you go. God will reward you for being a good, dutiful boy. I know
it; I feel it; and that’s all that keeps me up when I think about your
being alone, so far off, without a friend to look to. O if you could only
get home to us! I only ask to see you again, and I could die in peace.
“Poor Abby has cried herself to sleep these two nights, and hasn’t eaten
a meal. You know she was always _his_ favorite—and Hannah doesn’t seem
well this cold weather; she never was very strong. All the neighbors are
very kind, especially Squire Merrill and Mrs. Chase—she sends Ben over
almost every day, to see if he can do any thing, and I don’t know how
we should get along sometimes, if they did not send in something every
little while. Squire Merrill was in here this afternoon, and says I had
better send this to San Francisco, for you might get enough to come home
with, and think to ask at the post-office there before you do. He thinks
you will come right home as soon as you can. It seems to me as if it
would be best, but I don’t know. My only comfort is, _God knows what is
best for all of us; if we didn’t need trouble he wouldn’t send it_; I say
that to myself over and over again, and I pray for you, morning, noon,
and night. HE has been my guide from my youth up, only make Him yours, my
son, and He will take care of you. Whether I ever see you again in this
world or not, I hope to see you in another, for absence or death can make
no difference in my love for you.
“It has been very hard to say ‘forgive us our trespasses,’ when I think
of Colcord, but I try to, and I’m glad you did not tell. Sam, there isn’t
one boy in a hundred would have done what you’ve done. No, nor in a
thousand neither!”
Sam’s hot tears fell faster and faster on these words. He felt rewarded
for all he had suffered, and all that was before him. He was not ashamed
to lay his head down on the table and “cry it out.”
“Well, now, if you’re through, suppose we have some breakfast,” Hadley
said, as he came back with the waiter, bearing a tray covered with good
things. “_I_ haven’t had any letters from home, and I’m hungry. Yes—two
oyster stews, boy—any thing that’s good—hurry up there.”
It was such a meal as Sam had not seen for many a day, and served on a
table with some pretensions to comfort and elegance. At first he tried
to eat to please his generous friend, and because he felt that he needed
food; but by the time the savory oyster stew arrived, he was doing almost
as well as his companion, in the way of clearing the other dishes.
“I was just thinking it’s a great pity you’re not a girl,” Hadley
leisurely remarked, in the interval of breaking a cracker into his plate,
and giving a little stir with his spoon.
Sam looked up, wondering why his sex was a matter of regret; it never had
been to him. Who ever did see a boy that was not proud of being one, and
had not in the bottom of his heart a great feeling of superiority towards
all “girls?”
“Why, you see, I’m looking up a cook, that’s my errand down here. You did
not know I had turned ranchero, country gentleman, with a villa under
the elegant title of Hadley’s Ranch.—Well, I have, and find it rather too
much to see to ploughing and sowing, making fences, taking care of the
chickens, stable boy and cook into the bargain. Women folks are scarce up
in our valley, and unless I sacrifice myself and marry one of those Pike
County whole-team individuals, I don’t see what’s going to become of me.”
“I did not know you were a farmer, sir,” Sam said, while his mother’s
counsel of working at whatever offered itself, came into his mind.
“Nor I either—till I tried it, just by way of a change when I came down
from the mines. What do you suppose my sisters would say to such a fist
as that? I used to wear Stewart’s ladies’ gloves to their parties before
I came away, and think it was hard work to wait on them to the opera. I
don’t suppose they would own any part of me but my moustache now.”
Hadley’s dress was certainly suggestive of any thing sooner than a
New-York dandy, and so were his face and figure, hardy and sunburnt; but
his manners had the courtesy and self-possession of a gentleman, as well
as the free and easy style of the new country. It was quite true before
he came to California he had managed to spend a large property, left
to him by his father, and his sisters were among the most fashionable
women in New-York. His riches had taken the wings of extravagance and
self-indulgence, to flee away; but as he often said, it was the best
thing they ever did for him.
“I should think sisters would be glad to own a person any way,” Sam said,
thinking _his_ sisters would, if he came home a beggar.
“Very likely, if they’d lived together when they were children, and had
a mother to look after them. My sisters always lived at boarding-school,
and so did I until I was old enough to take the reins into my own hands.
I drove a little too fast, and got upset, you see. Won’t you have
something else?”
But Sam’s very good appetite was quite satisfied, and that brought him
back to business matters. “I don’t believe but I could cook, sir.”
“You! what do you know about it?”
“A great deal; more than most boys I mean. My mother is a first rate
cook, and I used to like to be around baking days, and in the galley, on
the ship. You know I always cooked on the bar.”
“So you did—did not I teach you how to make slap-jacks one day? I
consider _that_ an accomplishment worth having;” and Hadley shut one eye
and looked up in the air, as if to catch a smoking, brown, batter-cake,
after a scientific toss.
“Well, suppose you try it, till something else turns up.”
Sam was only too glad to accept the proposal. The prospect of immediate
employment, at any thing but mining, and with a person he liked very
much, seemed almost too good news to be true. He had very little idea of
a ranch, except that it was something like a farm, and he should live a
kind of free and easy life. A very pleasant prospect, since he could not
get home, after the great fatigue and monotony of a miner’s life.
“I don’t promise very high wages”—was about all the agreement they made,
and they were on the sloop that was to take them across San Pablo Bay,
before Hadley mentioned the matter at all. They were very glad to get
away from the discomforts of San Francisco, as soon as the business
which had brought him down, was finished. The air was full of ashes and
cinders, and every second person they met was a sufferer in some way
by the fire. The little sloop had a load of lumber for Hadley’s ranch
on board, and an assorted cargo of flour, rice, molasses, sugar, and
groceries of all kinds for the same place. These were to be given to
Sam’s charge forthwith.
The sail was perfectly delightful. The air was so fresh and exhilarating,
as the little vessel bounded across the broad bay, the spray and mist
dashing up before her, and the white sails filled with a favorable wind.
The hills, usually so bare and desolate, were covered with a vivid mantle
of green to the very summits, by the heavy rains, and the few days of
warm sunshine. Hadley seemed to enjoy Sam’s delight, but told him to keep
his ecstasies for the ranch, for there was no place in California, nor
the whole world to compare with it! A very small world, probably, Sam
thought.
But he did not wonder much, when he came in sight of it; in his world, he
certainly had never seen any thing that could compare with that first
glimpse of Sonoma valley. It was as different from any thing he had seen
in California, as if he had been in another country. The desolate plains
of Sacramento, the barren ranges of the hills in the mining country, make
the rich valleys all the more beautiful by contrast.
It was an hour before sundown, when the sloop came to, at the
Embarcadero, or landing, on a little creek, emptying into the bay,
after winding through the fertile valley lands. A _real_ wagon, and two
spirited horses were waiting them, in charge of Maloney, the head man,
whose universal knowledge, and blunders and brogue, Hadley had been
amusing Sam with that afternoon. His employer took “the reins into his
own hands,” as he had said, and now he could not drive too fast for Sam’s
good pleasure, or his own impatience. The ranch was a perfect passion
with him. Sam believed he was right when he said he should not care any
more for a wife if he had one. The horses, Bill and Dick, knew very
well who was driving them, and flew along a road as level as an English
turn-pike; bordered by fields instead of fences, prairie-like meadows
of wild oats, and countless flowers, so thick, and with such brilliant
colors that the whole valley seemed like a bright carpet unrolled before
them. Clumps of oaks, and red-wood trees stood like islands in this sea
of verdure, with a bright emerald foliage of early spring, and waved and
rustled their branches from the hills on each side. There was not a bare
or barren spot for miles, and fording the creek now grown narrower, but
not less clear and musical, they came suddenly on the new house, standing
in the very midst of this luxuriance.
There were fences and out-houses, oxen lowing, and hens cackling, the
deep growl of the watch-dog, and the snapping of two most ill-natured
looking terriers, to make up the picture. The house itself was really a
house, and not a log cabin, or shanty, as Sam had supposed. The frame
had been shipped from the States, and sent up by Hadley, to replace the
shanty of the first settler, when he came into possession of the ranch.
It was two stories high, with real windows and doors, and painted white.
Sam had not expected to find any thing so comfortable on the premises;
and was astonished, much to Hadley’s gratification, when he caught the
first glimpse of it through the trees.
Its furniture was not very elegant or abundant, and the largest room
was filled with a varied collection of farming and carpenters’ tools,
boards, seeds, chests and boxes of all kinds,—a general lumber room. In
the absence of a barn, which was to be built as soon as the ranchero
could afford it, or time would permit, the fowls had been let out of
the very large chicken house, and the long legs of a Shanghai were
walking comfortably over the kitchen table, while three more surveyed
the new arrivals curiously from the door-step. There was a bedroom on
the ground-floor, with a four-post bedstead, minus mattress, sheets or
pillows,—sacking, and a pair of blue blankets supplied their places.
Overhead were two unfurnished rooms, occupied by Maloney, and his brother
work-fellows, in harvest time; their blankets doing duty on the floor.
The housekeeping, to which Sam was speedily introduced, was quite
as miscellaneous.—Some obliging neighbor had sent over a gallon of
buttermilk, and the bread was as light and well baked as Mrs. Gilman’s.
The fried, fresh beef, and boiled beans, were eaten with _silver forks_,
a trace of Hadley’s early propensities, and the only set that had so far
entered the valley; and he washed the dishes himself, by the light of
spermaceti candles inserted into empty claret bottles. Perhaps Abby would
not have been satisfied with the general use the towels were put to, and
might have thought they would have lasted longer if they had been hemmed.
But Abby was not there, and her brother saw nothing to grumble at.
Matters looked a little straighter about the house, however, after his
ministrations commenced. He shared in his mother’s love of order and
neatness, and many of her practical lessons to Abby and Hannah came back
to him. He found that when the chairs were set up, and the chickens
dislodged, the stove cleaned, and the floor swept, “the decks were
considerably clearer to work in.” Instead of thinking his employment
degrading or unbecoming, he took the greatest pride and pleasure in it,
since it _was_ his work, and kept in mind one of Mrs. Gilman’s favorite
maxims, “Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.”
He obeyed a still higher precept, “_Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do
with all thy might_;” and thus it was, that “faithful in a few things,”
he fitted himself to “be ruler over many” when the time should come.
Life on the ranch was never dull or monotonous. Housekeeping was a very
small part of what he did. There were the fowls to feed and water,
the eggs to look after, and the young brood to watch. Hadley’s fowls
received as much attention as any part of the family. They were a China
breed, rare and costly, and he was as fond of them as of the ranch, or
the house, or Sam; for when Sam came to be known in the valley, he was
as great a favorite as he had been on ship-board. People came miles to
see the fowls. Hadley knew them all apart, and had named most of them,
curious entries being made in the farm journal, kept daily, of the eggs
and families of “Pert,” “Topknot,” “Old Maid,” “Sauce Box,” “Dinah,”
and many other occupants of the chicken house. There was an excuse for
a vegetable garden laid out when Sam came, but no one had found time to
attend to it. By June it was as flourishing as garden could be, with
rows of lettuce and early peas, and such beets and melons, in prospect,
as would have astonished the farmers at Merrill’s Corner. Hay-making,
from the tall, wild oats, was the farm work for the first few weeks, and
Sam was as much help as any of the extra hands. Hadley mowed with the
men all day, drinking molasses and water from the same big pitcher, and
beating them by half an acre, when he became a little accustomed to the
swing of the scythe. He was very much respected all through the valley,
his pride taking the form of a sturdy independence, and his liberal,
generous disposition finding its proper place in the hospitalities of a
new country.
When the day’s work was done, Sam was his chosen companion, while he
smoked his cigar—another trace of old habits—on a tour of inspection to
the stable, the garden, or the chicken-house, or galloped over to Sonoma
for letters, or small stores. He had never passed a week in the country
before he came to California, except at a watering-place, and listened to
Sam’s practical suggestions with a great deal of respect.
“I’ll tell you what, Sam,” he would say, knocking the ashes from his
cigar on the top rail of the fence—“there’s no other life like it. I’ve
seen a good deal of the world, and spent a good deal of money. There
was my father slaved himself to death, to leave his children rich. What
comfort did he take with all his money, pinned down to a desk all day?
Well, I spent as fast as he made, when I came along. I went to Europe
before I was twenty-one, and I bought every thing I took a fancy to, and
saw every thing that was to be seen. When all that was gone, I came with
the rest of the world to California for more, and got to the mines just
in the thick of the gold crop. Handling the gold is all well enough, but
what’s the use of it up there? It don’t bring a home, nor a house to put
your head in,—you spend about as much as you can make, and have nothing
to show for it.”
Sam always agreed with him, and thought if he was only earning a little
more, for his mother and sisters, or could be near them, he would not
change his life on the ranch for any thing he could think of. He worked
as many hours as when he was at the mines, but he lived for something
else besides eating and sleeping. His boyhood came back, surrounded by
this beautiful country, and enjoying its freedom. He had explored it for
miles in every direction, mounted on one of Hadley’s excellent horses,
which he was as free to use as if they had been his own. Jerry and
Buck, the oxen, had a fancy for being neighborly, when their day’s work
was ended, and straying off to try the oats on the adjoining farms, or
see how the barley crops came on. Hunting after them was one of Sam’s
favorite sports; though they often led him a weary chase, and were
captured one at a time.
Then there was Sunday, that blessed day of rest both to man and beast,
when the house had a more orderly air than usual, and Sam always “went to
meeting”—as he called putting on clean clothes and reading his mother’s
Bible.
The ranch abounded in books and newspapers, in which its owner never
stinted himself, being supplied regularly by arrivals from the States;
and through these, Sam was getting a good, practical education, mind and
body both developing, through natural, healthy exercise.