folks came to fill a long-standing promise to take tea with us, and
spend the evening at our tent. The visit passed off very pleasantly, and
an engagement was made to return it at an early day. Toby, who was
prowling about the tent, no doubt overheard the conversation, and felt
it incumbent on him to fill the engagement as soon as possible.
Consequently, he stationed himself near the major's tent-fly the very
next morning, and paid close attention to the preparations going on for
tea; and just as the cook had put the finishing-touch to the table, and
had stepped back to call the family and set the tea and the meats on the
table, Toby gravely walked up, swallowed the butter with one gulp, upset
the sugar-bowl, gobbled up the contents, and proceeded leisurely to
investigate the inside of a tin jelly-can. The soldiers, who had watched
his manoeuvres from a distance, had been too much charmed with the
performance to give warning to the cook; but when he made his
appearance, meat-dish and tea-pot in hand, they gave such a shout as set
the whole camp in an uproar, and Toby was fairly worshipped by the
soldiers from that day out.
But the faithfulness and patience of the horse, in time of need, made me
forgive him all these tricks. Months later--when still on the march, in
the most desolate wilderness, in the midst of the pathless mountains,
when other horses "gave up the ghost," and were shot at the rate of a
dozen a day--Toby held out, carrying me on his back, day after day,
night after night, till his knees trembled with fatigue and faintness,
and he turned his head and took my foot between his teeth, at last, to
tell me he could carry me no farther! Not once, but a dozen times, has
he repeated this manoeuvre; once, too, when we were coming down a very
steep hill, he planted his forefeet down firmly, turned his head, and
softly bit the foot I held in the stirrup, to tell me that I must
dismount.
The most singular devotion of one horse to another, I witnessed while
out in New Mexico. The captain found it necessary to draw a saddle-horse
for his own use, and selected one from a number which the volunteers had
left behind. It had been half-starved latterly, and was vicious, more
from ill-treatment than by nature. The first evening when it was brought
to our stable, it kicked the orderly so that he could not attend to the
horses next morning, and the cook had to look after them. I went into
the stable to bring Toby a titbit of some kind, and here found that Copp
(the new horse) was deliberately eating the feed out of Toby's trough.
The cook called my attention to it, and explained that the horse had
done the same thing last night; and on interfering, the orderly had been
viciously kicked by the animal. I reached over to stroke the creature's
mane, but the cook called to me to stop, holding up his arm to show
where the horse had bitten him. I went quickly back into the tent, got a
large piece of bread, and held it out to Copp. In an instant he had
swallowed it, and had fallen back on Toby's feed again, without meeting
with the least opposition from that side. Toby evidently had better
sense, and more charity, than the men had shown; he knew that the horse
was half-starved, and wicked only from hunger.
If I had never believed before that horses were capable of reasoning,
and remembering kind actions, Copp's behavior toward Toby would have
converted me. Often, when out on timber-cutting or road-making
excursions, I accompanied the captain, and, mounted on Toby, would hold
Copp by the bridle or picket-rope, so as to allow the orderly to
participate in the pleasures of the day. The grass was rich up in the
mountains, and Toby would give many a tug at the bridle to get his head
down where he could crop it; this, however, had been forbidden by the
captain, once for all, and Toby was compelled to hold his head up in the
proper position. Copp, however, was allowed to crop the grass; but he
never ate a mouthful, of which he did not first give Toby half!
Sometimes he would go off as far as the bridle would reach, gather up a
large bunch in his mouth, and then step back to Toby and let him pull
his share of it out from between his teeth. But no other horse dare
approach Toby in Copp's sight. I have seen him jump quite across the
road for the purpose of biting a horse that was rubbing his nose against
Toby's mane in a friendly manner. One day we met a party of disappointed
gold-hunters, who were anxious to dispose of a little, light wagon they
had. The captain bought it, thinking to break Toby and Copp to harness.
Toby took to his new occupation kindly enough, but Copp could only be
made to move in his track when I stood at a distance and called to him.
He would work his way up to me with a wild, frightened air; but the
moment I was out of his sight, neither beating nor coaxing could induce
him to move a step.
But--dear me--those horses have taken up my thoughts so completely, that
I have almost exhausted this paper without speaking of the other pets I
have had. The horned toad could never make its way into my good graces;
nor the land-turtle, neither, after it had once "shut down" on my dog
Tom's tail. They were both abolished by simply leaving them on the road.
The prairie-dog refused to be tamed, but ran away, the ungrateful
wretch, with collar, chain, and all; a living wonder, no doubt, to his
brethren in the prairie-dog village, through which we were passing at
the time.
But my mink, Max, was a dear little pet. He was given me by a soldier at
Fort Union, and had been captured on the Pecos River, near Fort Sumner.
He was of a solid, dark-brown color, and the texture of his coat made it
clear at once why a set of mink-furs is so highly prized by the ladies.
His face was anything but intelligent; yet he was as frisky and active
as any young mink need be. It was while we were still on the march, that
Max took his place in the ambulance by me as regularly as day came. When
we made camp in the afternoon, he was allowed to run free, and when it
grew dark, I would step to the tent-door, call "Max! Max!" and
immediately he would come dashing up, uttering sounds half-chuckle,
half-bark, as if he were saying: "Well, well--ain't I coming as fast as
I can?"
On long days' marches he would lie so still in the ambulance, that I
often put out my hand to feel whether he was beside me; and wherever I
happened to thrust my fingers, his mouth would be wide open to receive
them, and a sharp bite would instantly apprise me of his whereabouts. He
had his faults, too--serious faults--and one of them, I fear, led to his
destruction. Travelling over the plains of New Mexico, in the middle of
summer, is no joking matter, for man or mink, and a supply of fresh,
cool water, after a hot day's march, is not only desirable, but
necessary. But it is not always an easy matter to get water; and I have
known the men to go two or three miles for a bucketful. Getting back to
camp weary and exhausted, they would naturally put the bucket in the
only available place--on the ground; and the next moment, Max, who was
always on hand for his share of it, would suddenly plunge in and swim
"'round and 'round" in pursuit of his tail--choosing to take his drink
of water in this manner, to the great disgust of the tired men.
Company "B" was still with us at this time, and the tent of the company
commander was pitched not far from ours. Sergeant Brown, of this
company, was in possession of a dozen or two of chickens; and these, I
suspect, were the cause of the mink's death. Like all animals out in the
wilderness, the chickens could be allowed to run free, without ever
straying away from their owner: there was thought to be no danger
lurking near for them; but suddenly one or two were found with their
throats torn open, and the blood sucked from their lifeless bodies. Max
was accused, with the greater show of truth, as the cook of the
lieutenant had caught him the next day rolling away an egg, which he had
purloined from the lieutenant's stock of provisions. The cook, following
Max, discovered that he had already three eggs hidden in the
neighborhood of our tent. I grew alarmed for the safety of my pet,
though I knew that the men of our company would not have harmed a hair
of his brown, bear-like head.
One night I stepped to the tent-door to call Max; but no Max answered.
The orderly was sent to look through the tents, as Max sometimes stopped
with the men who showed any disposition to play with him--but he could
not be found. I spent an uneasy night, calling "Max! Max!" whenever I
heard the least noise outside the tent. Next morning I got up betimes,
and as soon as I had swallowed my breakfast, went down toward the Rio
Grande. The ground grew broken and rocky near the banks of the river,
and I half thought he might have returned to his native element. I
climbed to a point where I could see the river, and called "Max! Max!"
but heard nothing in answer, save the rolling of a little stone I had
loosened with my foot. "Max! Max!" I called again; but the dull roar of
the water, where it surged lazily against the few exceptional rocks on
the bank, was all I could hear. Going back to camp, I found the tents
struck, the command moving, and the ambulance waiting for me. Wiping the
tears from my face, I climbed in--shaking the blankets for the fiftieth
time to see if Max had not mischievously hidden among them.
From a conversation I overheard long afterward, I concluded that Max had
fallen a victim to Sergeant Brown's revengeful spirit--in fact, had been
slaughtered in atonement for those assassinated chickens.
_POKER-JIM._
Two motherless girls, and only a brother a few years older left to
protect them.
When the father died, the mother had turned the old homestead--for there
_are_ houses in San Francisco fifteen and twenty years old--into a
source of revenue from which she provided for the children. The father
had left nothing save debts--gambling debts--and the fraternity had not
called on the widow to settle these. For her own existence she seemed to
need nothing--absolutely nothing--but the caresses of her children, and
the happiness and contentment mirrored in their eyes. When she died the
girls were old enough, and competent, to look after the house, which the
mother had made a pleasant home to many a "roomer" who had come a
stranger to the city, had been badgered and harassed by flint-eyed,
stony-hearted landladies, and had at last, by some good fortune, found
his way into the precincts of the widow's cozy, quiet walls. The son
had, through the influence of some of the roomers, obtained a position
in a wholesale liquor establishment, where the salary was high, and--the
temptation great.
That the two young girls should carry on the house just as their dying
mother had left it to them, was something no one in San Francisco would
think of commenting upon. And as the proverbial chivalry of the
Californian would prompt him to suffer inconvenience and loss rather
than to deprive women in any way thrown on his care or his protection,
they missed only their mother's love and presence in the home, which
remained home to them still. After a while the painful truth dawned on
them that their brother was being weaned away from it. His evenings were
now but seldom spent with them in the little sitting-room whose
ivy-mantled bay-window looked out on the garden, where the flower-beds
had moved closer up to the house as the lots became more valuable, and
the orchard had been cut down to a few trees on the grass-plot.
At first the excuse was, that customers from the country, buying heavily
of the firm, had a right to expect attentions not strictly of a business
nature from him, its chief representative. Then his absence from home
grew more protracted, and often midnight tolled from St. Mary's before
his unsteady feet mounted the door-steps. One night, a lady, attracted
to the balcony by an unusually brilliant moon, when she awoke from her
midnight slumbers, wonderingly saw a carriage drive up to the house
where the two sisters lay in peaceful sleep. She was too far off to see
whether there was a number on the carriage, or what the number was.
Neither could she distinguish the face of the driver, nor that of the
gentleman who assisted another, whom she rightly judged to be Edward
Ashburne, from the carriage into the house. That the face of the one who
supported, or rather carried, young Edward, was deadly white, framed in
by a heavy black beard, was all she could tell. "Poor girls!" she
soliloquized; "better that the boy was dead than turn drunkard, and
gamble, like his father."
The carriage drove off rapidly after the gentleman--who, as she thought,
had helped Ned to the door and rang the bell--had re-entered it; and
carriage-driver and ghostly-faced gentleman could never be found or
heard of afterward.
What the neighbor-lady heard still further that same night was, first,
the furious barking, then the doleful howling of the young Newfoundland
dog, which the Misses Ashburne had recently "adopted," and, soon after,
a wild, heart-rending cry.
"The horrid boy!" she continued, full of sympathy; "is he so beastly
drunk? Could he have struck one of his sisters?"
Aye, good woman; struck them both a terrible blow, but not with his
hand, for that lay powerless by his side. And the eyes were sightless
that stared vacantly into their own, as they bent over him where he lay
stretched out on the hall-floor--his coat folded under his head, his
latch-key close at hand. Only a painful gasp answered their pitiful
entreaties to "speak once more;" and before the sympathizing inmates of
the stricken house could remove him to his bed, he had breathed his
last.
"Beaten to a jelly," sententiously remarked one of the men, under his
breath, to another, as they left the chamber to the sisters and the more
intimate friends of the family.
"Some woman scrape--you can bet on that," was the response. And they
joined the others in their efforts to discover the perpetrators of the
dastard deed.
But no clue was found, and after a while San Francisco forgot the
sisters and their sorrow; and one day, when the neighbor-lady told her
ever-fresh story to a new-made acquaintance, she added: "And now they
have gone, the poor girls, and nobody knows where."
From the balcony of the two-story frame hotel-building a young girl was
watching the sunlight sinking behind the dimly-outlined range of the
Coast Mountains. Perhaps her eyes roved so far away because the
immediate surrounding of the hotel was not attractive; though the
streets devoted to private residences of this little city--to which the
railroad was fast making its way--were pleasing to the eye, and rather
Southern in their features. The orange, ripening in one cluster with the
fragrant blossom, as well as the tall-growing oleander, embowering
cottage alike with mansion, spoke of oppressive weather in the summer,
and promised glorious, balmy days during the short California winter.
Had the girl, at whose feet a large Newfoundland dog lay sleeping,
stepped to the end of the balcony which ran along the whole length of
the house, she could have followed the course of the Feather River,
which but a short distance away mingled its clear waters with the muddy
waves of the Yuba. But she was evidently not engaged in a study of the
"lay of the land," though her eyes seemed to follow with some interest
the direction of a particular road leading to the hotel. Directly she
spoke to the dog, touching him lightly with her toe: "Cruiser, old dog,
come, wake up, they are coming."
From out of the cloud of dust rolling up to the hotel emerged hacks and
stages well filled with passengers, whom the railroad had brought from
San Francisco to Yuba City, and who thus continued to this place and
onward. Partly sheltered from sight by the boughs of a tree shading the
balcony, the young girl leaned forward to scan the faces of the people
who left hacks and coaches and hastened into the house to brush and wash
off a little of the biting, yellowish dust clinging to them. It seemed
to be a sort of pastime with the girl and her four-footed companion,
this "seeing the people get in;" for she made remarks and observations
on the looks and manners of people which the dog seemed fully to
understand, for he would reply, sometimes with a wag of his bushy tail,
sometimes with a short, sharp bark, and then again with a long yawn of
_ennui_. Almost the last passenger who alighted was a gentleman whose
large black eyes and raven hair would have thrilled the bosom of any
miss of sixteen--as, indeed, they startled our young friend, although
she might have been two or three years above and beyond that interesting
age. The bough that she had drawn down to screen herself behind, sprang
up with a sudden snap, which caused the upturning of a pale and rather
severe face, from which looked those black eyes with a grave, rather
than sad, expression. A sudden thought or memory--she did not know
which--shot through her brain as her eyes looked down into his; it was
only a flash, but it made her think of her childhood, of her mother--she
hardly knew of what.
"Cruiser, old dog," she said; but the dog had squeezed his head under
the railing as far as he could get it, as if making a desperate attempt
to get a nearer look at the stranger. When he drew his head back he
raised himself, laid his forepaws on the railing, and looked hard into
the girl's face, with a low, questioning whine. "It's nothing, old boy;
you don't know him. Come, now, we'll see if we can help Julia about the
house."
Down at the bar, mine host of the "Eagle Exchange" was welcoming his
guests, nerving himself to this task with frequent libations, offered by
the fancy bartender, and paid for by such of his guests as had made the
"Exchange" their stopping-place before, and knew of the landlord's
weakness. Stepping from the bar-room into the reading-room, to look for
any stray guest who might have failed to offer at the shrine, he met the
dark-eyed stranger face to face, and recoiled, either from some sudden
surprise or the effects of deep potations, steadying himself against the
door-frame as he reeled. The stranger, continuing on his way to the
staircase, seemed hardly to notice him, involuntarily turning his head
away as if unwilling to view so fair-looking a specimen of humanity
degrading himself to the level of the brute.
Later at night we find our young friend, together with her older sister,
in the family sitting-room of the hotel. Annie, the younger, is softly
stroking the sister's hair as though she were the elder, endeavoring to
comfort a fretting, troubled child. No word was spoken until the
husband-landlord entered the room. Julia gave a nervous start, while
Annie touched her gently and soothingly on the shoulder. Mr. Davison
was a great deal soberer than could be expected; and his wife gave a
sigh of relief when she found that he was only maudlin drunk.
"Ah, there you are, both together again--as affectionate a pair of
sisters as ever I see. Well, well, Julia, girl, maybe I ain't made you
as good a husband as you deserve to have, but I'll see that our little
sister there is well provided for. By-the-by, Annie, when Tom Montrie
comes down from the mountains he'll find good sport: one of the nicest
fellows you ever saw has come down from San Francisco, and I'll try to
get him to spend at least part of the winter with us. Oh, he's on the
sport," in answer to an anxious look from Julia, "but he's a mighty
clever fellow--genteel, and all that sort of thing. Tom's made a pretty
good stake again this summer, I know; and it'll be a good plan to keep
him well entertained while Annie is away teaching the ragged young
one--for I suppose she'll insist on keeping on in that stupid school,
when she might just as well marry Tom at once and set herself and her
poor relations up in the world."
The girl had listened in silence to this long tirade, a burning spot on
each cheek alone showing that she heard at all what was said. It was
Julia's turn to be elder sister now.
"Annie," she said, "I forgot to tell Peter that he had better use more
yeast for the muffins he sets to-night; will you please to tell him so
as you go up-stairs?" Drawing her fingers through Annie's curly brown
hair, and looking affectionately into her deep hazel eyes, she kissed
her good-night; and the sister silently departed, followed up-stairs by
Cruiser, who kept watch through the night on his rug outside her door.
To discover the cause of Mr. Davison's unusual sobriety we must go back
for an hour or two. When night had set in, the stranger from San
Francisco, who had registered his name as J. B. Peyton, was promenading
on the porch in front of the hotel, quietly smoking his Havana and
thoughtfully regarding the stars. Presently the host opened the door of
the reading-room, stepped out on the porch, and closed it behind him
again, as though to keep the chilly autumn air from striking the inmates
of the room. Approaching the stranger, he eyed him as keenly as his
somewhat dimmed vision, aided by the sickly light of a pale young moon,
would permit, and then exclaimed, in a tone intended to be cordial:
"It's you, by ----, it is! Give us your hand, and tell us how you are
and how the rest of them have fared."
The stranger, in a voice which, like his eyes, was grave rather than
sad, replied, somewhat stiffly:
"I am quite well, as you see; whom else you are inquiring for, I don't
know." Then, warming up suddenly, he went on, in a tone of bitter
reproach: "And you have married one of these poor girls? You should not
have done it had I known of it, depend on it."
"Well, well, wasn't that the best I could do for them?" In his tone
bravado and reason were struggling for the mastery. "To be sure," he
continued, quailing before the flashing eye of his companion, "I have
not had much luck of late; everything seems going against me--I am
almost ruined."
"You have ruined yourself. Why should _you_ have luck?" He was silent a
moment, busying himself with his cigar; then he continued; "Where is
Celeste? What became of her?"
"Curse the ungrateful, perjured wretch!" answered the other, grinding
his teeth with sudden rage; "when my luck first turned she went off,
mind you, with a ship-captain, to China. She knew she could never live
where I was. I'd--"
"Do with her as you did with--"
"Hush!" whispered the shivering host; "don't speak so loud! Wasn't there
something stirring in the tree there?" And, like Macbeth seeing Banquo's
ghost, he started backward to the well-lit room.
It is generally accepted that life in California, particularly in
earlier days, was full of excitement and change, every day bringing with
it some horrible occurrence or startling event. Perhaps, at the date of
my story--about 1860--this excitement had somewhat cooled down; or
perhaps it was the life of our young friend only that had flowed along
so evenly while at this place. The "horrible occurrence" of her day was
the ever-recurring period of her brother-in-law's intoxication,
sometimes maudlin, sometimes violent, but always fraught with bitterness
and sorrow to her on account of her gentle, long-suffering sister. The
"startling event" was the coming in of the hacks and coaches from the
railroad terminus, which she watched, half-hidden by the tree, and
together with her almost inseparable companion, Cruiser, just as she had
done that day when Mr. Peyton made his first appearance at this place.
Perhaps her interest in the arrivals was even greater now than it had
been before. Often, when about to turn from her post of observation, a
pair of grave black eyes, upturned from the porch below, seemed asking a
question of her that she vainly puzzled her brain to understand. Once or
twice she had started to go to her sister's room at such times, trying
to frame the question she seemed to read in the stranger's eye. But the
question remained unframed and unanswered; and day after day Annie
taught her little pupils at school, came home and helped Julia about the
house, and in the evening encountered the sphinx that baffled all her
dreamy speculations.
It had been a matter of displeasure to her brother-in-law for some time
that the arrival of the stage from Laporte was not noticed by Annie with
the same degree of interest as the coming-in of the passengers from the
opposite direction.
"Tom'll be coming some day," he said, grumblingly, to his wife, "and
that fine sister of yours will take no more notice of his arrival than
if a Chinaman had come!"
And so it proved. One morning as Annie, followed by Cruiser with the
lunch-basket, was descending the front steps of the hotel porch, Mr.
Davison hastened to block up her road with his portly figure.