allow my sister-in-law to plod over to that school-house and bother with
those dirty urchins any more? Let them find some one else, for you will
not teach there much longer. Come, Cruiser, give us the basket! Annie'll
stay at home to-day, at least."
"Don't trouble Cruiser unnecessarily," replied Annie, laughing
pleasantly; "I haven't fallen heir to any fortune of late, that I am
aware of, and until I do, I'm afraid that both I and Cruiser will have
to follow our old vocation."
"You know that a fortune awaits you, Annie," was the persuasive
response, "if you would only stretch out your hand for it. How will Tom
receive the information, when he gets up this morning, that you have not
paid him the attention to remain home for one day, at least?"
"I hope you will not conceal from Mr. Montrie that it is a matter of the
utmost indifference to me how he receives the information."
"Your sister will talk to you about this matter," blustered the man. "A
girl like you to throw away her chances!"
"I will listen patiently to anything my sister may have to say to me."
And Annie, turning, was almost confronted by Mr. Peyton, coming in from
an early walk. He lifted his hat with something like reverence, and drew
aside to let the girl and her four-footed companion pass.
She did listen patiently to what her sister said to her that evening in
the little family sitting-room just back of the ladies'-parlor, on the
ground floor. One door of this room opened out on a porch, on the other
side of which rose the blank wall of another apartment, built of frame,
with only one window looking out towards the street, and the door
opposite this window. Between this and the bar-room lay dining-room,
pantry, and kitchen; so that no one from the bar-room, which lay back of
the reading-room, on the other side of the entrance hall, could see this
room with the single door and window.
In California parlance, "the tiger" was kept in this room. If we could
have looked into this gaily-furnished apartment about the time Annie was
on her way to her room, having left her sister's presence with
tear-stained eyes, we should have beheld Mr. Peyton's pale, clear-cut
face bending over a table, around which a number of men were seated. The
various accoutrements of the game spread out before him, denoted that
this man, with the well-modulated musical voice, with the soft, grave
expression of countenance, with the quiet, gentlemanly bearing, was "the
owner of the tiger."
The individual occupying the seat just across from Mr. Peyton was his
opposite in every respect. A tall, broad-shouldered mountain-man, whose
rusty beard and careless dress showed that, while "making his stake" in
the mountains, he had bestowed but little attention on his personal
appearance. No one could have disputed his claims to good looks, though
his glittering eyes seemed small, and were certainly too deep-set; and
when he laughed, the long white teeth gave a kind of hyena-look to the
whole face. Large hands, always twitching, and clumsy feet, forever
shuffling, gave him the appearance of a bear restlessly walking the
length of his chain. Altogether, in looks and bearing, he contrasted
unfavorably with Mr. Peyton; the one, smooth and polished as ivory; the
other, rough and uncouth as the grizzly of his mountain home.
But Mr. Davison, who had softly opened the door, and stood silently
regarding him a moment, seemed fairly in love with Mr. Montrie's broad
shoulders and matted hair--so gently did he touch the one, and stroke
the other, as he whispered into the ample ear something which caused
the small eyes to flicker with satisfaction and delight. Then, moving
around the table to where Mr. Peyton sat, he laid his hand on this
gentleman's shoulder, but much more timidly, though the faro-dealer
looked delicate, almost effeminate, compared to the huge proportions of
the man from the mountains.
"Jim--" he said, but corrected himself--"Mr. Peyton!" in an audible
whisper, "I don't want you to be hard on that man yonder; he'll soon be
one of the family, you know."
The information was given with many winks and nods and leers, such as
men in the first stages of intoxication are generally prolific of.
A single keen glance from the eagle-eyes of the gambler was sent across
to where the man from the mountains sat; but it sank to the depths of
the man's heart, and went searching through every corner. The next
moment Mr. Peyton was deeply engrossed in the "lay-out" before him.
It was long after midnight before "the tiger" was left to darkness and
solitude in the little room at the rear of the "Eagle Exchange." In the
course of the following morning, when Mr. Davison's brain was pretty
well cleared of the fumes of last night's potations, and before the
early-morning drams had yet materially affected it, he was made uneasy
by the approach of Mr. Peyton, of whom he stood in unaccountable dread.
"Have a cigar, Henry?" Mr. Peyton extended one of the choice kind he
always smoked himself; and then, by a motion of the hand, commanded the
now thoroughly sobered man into a chair beside his own. The reading-room
was deserted, and the paper Mr. Peyton had picked up was carelessly held
so that the fancy bar-keeper, who was twirling his elegant black
moustache, could not see his lips move.
"Henry," Mr. Peyton began, without further preliminaries, "if you allow
that man from the mountains to press his attentions on your
sister-in-law against her wishes, I'll break every bone in your body."
The threat seemed almost ridiculous from the delicate, white-fingered
stranger to this burly, overgrown piece of humanity; yet Mr. Davison did
not consider it so, for he answered, with pleading voice and cringing
manner:
"But if he is to marry her--"
"Marry her!" repeated the gambler, while a flash, such as the gate of
hell might emit were it opened for a moment, shot from his eyes; "I
would kill him first; yes, and tell the girl who it was that--"
"And send them both out on the world again, to work hard for their
bread, as I found them?"
"Better that a thousand times than that Annie should be made miserable,
like her sister, by being tied to a worthless sot, or a heartless
desperado."
"You're hard on me, Jim," whined the other. "If the girl marries this
man, a part of his money will go towards paying off my debts, and
setting me straight again in this house. He'll be good to her; and
what's the harm to anybody? You don't want the girl--I know your queer
notions of honor."
"Hush!" He sprang to his feet, and for the first time his voice
thrilled, and a quick flush darkened his brow. "Not another word; but so
sure as you drive the girl to this step, so sure will I tell her sister
who you are." His figure appeared tall as he moved away, and his
shoulders looked broad and strong as those of the man whom he left
cowering in his chair behind him.
This interview over, Mr. Peyton seemed utterly oblivious of the
existence of the family at the "Eagle Exchange." Mr. Davison said to
himself, with an inward chuckle, that he had "gotten round Jim before,
in spite of his keen eyes, and was likely to do so again;" while Annie,
still and white, looked like a bird wearied out with being chased, and
ready to fall into the snarer's net. Once or twice, in meeting Mr.
Peyton, it seemed to him that her hazel eyes were raised to his, with a
mute appeal in them; and at such times he lifted his hand hastily to his
forehead, where a heavy strand of the raven hair fell rather low into
it, near the right temple, as if to assure himself of the perfect
arrangement of his hair.
But in spite of all of Mr. Davison's cunning and contriving, Mr. Montrie
evidently made slow progress in his suit; for his visits to "the tiger"
grew longer and more frequent; and soon it came to be the order of the
day that the afternoons, as well as the nights, were spent in the little
room across the porch. A number of new arrivals from the various
mining-camps in the mountains lent additional interest to the games; and
bets were higher, and sittings longer, day after day. It was impossible
to tell from Mr. Peyton's unchanging face whether luck had been with him
or against him; but Mr. Montrie seemed all of a sudden elated, either
with the winnings he had made off "the tiger," or the success he had met
with in another quarter. Whichever it might be, Mr. Peyton, coming
unexpectedly upon him, as he sat in close consultation with Mr. Davison
one morning, could not have heard the mountain-man's invitation to drink
to his luck, for he passed straight on without heeding the invitation.
Mr. Davison quaked a little before the sharp glance thrown over to him;
"but then," he consoled himself, "d---- it, Jim is such a curious
mortal, and, like as not, he's forgotten all about it; he don't care for
the girl, no how."
The afternoon saw them again gathered around "the tiger," the man from
the mountains betting with a kind of savage recklessness that boded no
good to those who knew him well. He had not forgotten the slight Mr.
Peyton had put on him in the morning, according to his code of honor,
but was casting about in his mind for some manner in which to express
his indignation.
"What do you want to be quarrelling to-day for, Tom?" asked a
lately-arrived mountain-friend of him. "I see that gal of your'n this
morning; took a good look at her when she went to school; and, bless my
stars, if you don't know better than to grumble all the while on the
very day when--"
"Your interest in the game seems to be flagging, gentlemen," came Mr.
Peyton's voice across the table, with a somewhat hasty utterance; "shall
we close?"
An energetic negative from the rest of the company decided the question;
but Mr. Montrie, determined to play marplot, said:
"For my part, I'm tired of buckin' agin 'the tiger.' 'Pears to me a game
of poker might be healthy for a change."
Without losing a word, Mr. Peyton gathered up the faro-kit before him,
and laid cards on the table. Mr. Montrie's friend, a slow-spoken,
easy-going man, called Nimble Bill, was seated at the right of this
gentleman, across from Mr. Peyton's accustomed seat at the table; while
beside Mr. Peyton sat two or three others, who had "come down in the
same batch" with Mr. Montrie's friend.
The game progressed quietly for some time, Mr. Montrie alone manifesting
uneasiness by frequently consulting his watch and casting longing
glances through the window.
"Tom, old fellow, I believe you're regularly 'struck' at last," laughed
his friend. "It's mighty nigh time for that school to let out, I know;
so we'll let you off easy, and say no more about it; ha, ha, ha!" and he
turned for approval to the snickering men at the table.
Just then Mr. Peyton raised his hand quickly to his head, and the light
from the diamond on his finger flashed directly into the man's eyes.
"By-the-by, that's a mighty fine diamond you've got; I shouldn't mind
getting one to present to Tom's wife when he gets married. Now, what
mought be about the price of one like that, Mr.--what did you say the
gentleman's name was?" and he turned to his friend's working face.
"'Poker-Jim,' I should say," shouted the angered man, "from the way he's
been handling them cards this afternoon."
There was a hasty movement among those present; the motion of Mr.
Peyton's hand, as he threw it quickly behind him, was but too well
understood by all, and hurried steps rushed toward the door. When the
smoke had almost cleared away he was almost alone with his victim; only
the friend, against whom the dying man had fallen, was in the room
beside him. But from the outside approached heavy steps, while a shrill
female voice sent shriek after shriek through the house. Mr. Davison's
ashy face appeared at the door:
"Oh, Jim! what have you done? Let's lay him down here easy, Bill; and
now run for the doctor, quick; and tell the other fellows to keep still,
if they can."
"Go to your wife, Henry," ordered Mr. Peyton, with extended hand; "the
poor thing is in hysterics."
A look into the gambler's face told the man he must obey; but in his
perturbation, he did not see the white figure that glided by him into
the room.
"Why did you do it?" asked the girl, wringing her hands, but looking
into _his_ eyes without a glance at the prostrate body.
"I had to kill the brute to keep him from marrying you, Annie. How could
I let you fall into his hands--you, the daughter of the woman who
sheltered me and gave me a home, when, a poor deserted boy, I lay
bleeding from a brutal blow on the street. Annie, do you not know me?"
He raised the strand of hair that always lay low on his forehead, and a
deep scar appeared under it.
"Jimmy!" she cried, between surprise and joy. "But, oh!" she continued,
sadly, "I have found you but to lose you again. You must go, quick,
before they can send the sheriff or the doctor."
"We must part; yes, and perhaps never meet again on earth. But, ere we
part, I must give your heart another wound. Your brother--it was I
who--"
"Murdered him!" shrieked the girl. "Cruiser!" she called, wildly; and
the faithful animal, as if knowing the import of the conversation in the
room, threw himself with a fierce, yelping bark against the door.
"Hold!" and he caught the girl as she sprang to open it. "Hear me out,
while I have yet time to speak. It was I who brought him home, so that
he might sleep quietly in the church-yard, instead of finding a grave at
the bottom of the Bay. Ask Henry who killed him; ask him whether
'Celeste' was worth the blood of the poor boy, and he will not refuse to
tell the truth."
At the door Cruiser was scratching and whining, accompanying the man's
hurried words with a weird, uncanny music; and now he howled again as he
had howled on the night of poor Ned's death.
"Farewell, Annie; your sister and that dog will soon be the only friends
you have. I can neither claim you nor protect you. Farewell; be happy if
you can, and--forget me."
"Never! never!" sobbed the girl.
A hand, softer even than her own, was passed tenderly through her hair
and over her brow; a single kiss was breathed on her lips, and the next
moment she was alone, the dog, her sole friend, crouching, with every
demonstration of devotion and affection, at her feet.
_THE TRAGEDY AT MOHAWK STATION._
We called it our noon-camp, though it was really not after ten o'clock
in the morning. Ours was the only ambulance in the "outfit," though
there were some three or four officers besides the captain. The captain
had been ordered to report at head-quarters in San Francisco before
going East, and was travelling through Arizona as fast as Uncle Sam's
mules could carry him, in order to catch the steamer that was to leave
the Pacific coast at the end of the month. It is just a year ago, and
the Pacific Railroad was not yet completed; which accounts for the
captain's haste to reach the steamer.
When we made noon-camp at the Government forage-station called
Stanwick's Ranch, we had already performed an ordinary day's march; but
we were to accomplish twenty-five miles more before pitching our tent
(literally) at Mohawk Station for the night. These "stations" are not
settlements, but only stopping-places, where Government teamsters draw
forage for their mules, and where water is to be had;--the
station-keepers sometimes seeing no one the whole year round except the
Government and merchant trains passing along _en route_ to Tucson or
other military posts.
Lunch had been despatched, and I was lounging, with a book in my hand,
on the seat of the ambulance,--one of those uncomfortable affairs called
"dead-carts," with two seats running the entire length of the
vehicle,--when the captain put his head in to say that there was an
American woman at the station. White representatives of my sex are "few
and far between" in Arizona, and I had made up my mind to go into the
house and speak to this one, even before the captain had added:
"It is the woman from Mohawk Station."
The captain assisted me out of the ambulance, and we walked toward the
house together. The front room of the flat _adobe_ building was
bar-room, store, office, parlor; the back room was kitchen, dining-room,
bed-room; and here we found "the woman of Mohawk Station." I entered the
back room, at the polite invitation of the station-keeper, with whom the
captain fell into conversation in the store or bar-room.
The woman was young--not over twenty-five--and had been on the way from
Texas to California, with her husband and an ox-team, when Mr.
Hendricks, the man who kept the forage-station at Mohawk, found them
camped near the house one day, and induced them to stop with him. The
woman took charge of the household, and the man worked at cutting
firewood on the Gila and hauling it up to the house with the
station-keeper's two horses, or at any other job which Mr. Hendricks
might require of him. She had been a healthy, hearty woman when they
left Texas; but laboring through the hot, sandy deserts, suffering often
for water and sometimes for food, had considerably "shaken her," and she
was glad and willing to stop here, where both she and her husband could
earn money, and they wanted for neither water nor food--such as it is in
Arizona. It was hard to believe she had ever been a robust, fearless
woman, as she sat there cowering and shivering, and looking up at me
with eyes that seemed ready to start from their sockets with terror.
"May I come in?" I asked, uncertain whether to venture closer to the
shrinking form.
"Yes, yes," she said, breathing hard, and speaking very slowly. "Come
in. It'll do me good. You're the first woman I've seen since--since--"
"Tell me all about it," I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed, as
familiarly as though I had been her intimate friend for years; "or will
it agitate you and make you sick?"
"No," she made answer; "I am dying now, and I have often and often
wished I could see some woman and tell her the whole story before I die.
It almost chokes me sometimes because I can't speak about it; and yet I
always, always, think about it. I haven't seen any one but my husband
and the station-keeper these last three weeks--there is so little travel
now.
"You see, one Saturday afternoon there were two Mexicans came up this
way from Sonora, and stopped at Mohawk Station to camp for the night. It
was a cold, rainy, blustering day, and the men tried to build their fire
against the wall of the house. It was the only way they could shelter
themselves from the wind and rain, as Mr. Hendricks would not allow them
to come into the house. Pretty soon Mr. Hendricks drove them off, though
they pleaded hard to stay; and Colonel B., who had arrived in the
meantime, on his way to Tucson, told Mr. Hendricks that, if he knew
anything about Mexicans, those two would come back to take revenge.
Perhaps Mr. Hendricks himself was afraid of it, as he picketed his two
horses out between the colonel's tent and the house, for fear the
Mexicans might come in the night to drive them off. But they did not
return till Sunday afternoon, when, after considerable wrangling, Mr.
Hendricks engaged them both to work for him. The colonel had pulled up
stakes and had gone on his way to Tucson Sunday morning, so that we were
alone with the Mexicans during the night. But they behaved themselves
like sober, steady men; and the next morning they and my husband went
down to the river, some three miles away, to cut wood, which they were
to haul up with the team later in the day. Have you been at Mohawk
Station, and do you know how the house is built?" she asked,
interrupting herself.
"We camped there on our way out," I said; "and I remember that an open
corridor runs through the whole length of the house, and some two or
three rooms open into each other on either side."
"Very well; you remember the kitchen is the last room on the left of the
corridor, while the store-room and bar is the first room to the right.
Back of this is the little room in which Mr. Hendricks's bed stood, just
under the window; and opposite to this room, next to the kitchen, is the
dining-room.
"It was still early in the day, and I was busy in the kitchen, when I
heard a shot fired in the front part of the house; but as it was nothing
unusual for Mr. Hendricks to fire at rabbits or _coyotes_ from the door
of the bar-room, I thought nothing of it, till I saw the two Mexicans,
some time after, mounted on Mr. Hendricks's horses, riding off over
toward the mountains. When I first saw them, I thought they might be
going to take the horses down to the river; but then, I said to myself,
the Gila don't run along by the mountains. All at once a dreadful
thought flashed through my head, and I began to tremble so that I could
hardly stand on my feet. I crept into the corridor on tip-toe, and went
into the bar-room from the outside. From the bar-room I could look on
Mr. Hendricks's bed. He was lying across the bed, with his head just
under the window. I wanted to wake him up, to tell him that the Mexicans
were making off with his horses, but somehow I was afraid to call out or
to go up to him; so I crept around to the outside of the house till I
got to the window, and then looked in. Oh, dear! oh, dear! I can't
forget the dreadful, stony eyes that glared at me from the bruised and
blood-stained face; and after one look, I turned and ran as fast as I
could. Perhaps I ought to have gone into the house, to see if he were
really dead, or if I could help him or do anything for him; but I could
not. I ran and ran, always in the direction my husband had taken in the
morning. At one time I thought I heard some one running behind me, and
when I turned to look, the slippery sand under foot gave way, and I fell
headlong into a bed of cactus, tearing and scratching my face and hands
and arms; and when I got up again I thought some one was jumping out
from the verde-bushes, but it was only a rabbit running along. Before I
got many steps farther I slipped again, and something rattled and
wriggled right close by me. It was a rattlesnake, on which I had stepped
in my blindness. I ran on until I could not get my breath any more, and
staggered at every step; and just when I thought I must fall down and
die, I saw my husband coming toward me. He was coming home to see what
was keeping the Mexicans so long in bringing the horses down to the
river; and when I could get my breath, I told him what had happened. We
went back together, but I would not go into the house with him; so he
hid me in a thick verde-bush, behind some prickly-pears, and went in
alone. Directly he came back to me. He had found the corpse just as I
had described it. To all appearances, Mr. Hendricks had thrown himself
on the bed for a short nap, as the morning was very warm. The Mexicans
must have crept in on him, shot him with his own revolver, and then
beaten him over the head and face with a short heavy club that was found
on the bed beside him, all smeared with blood.
"Then my husband said to me: 'Mary, you've got to stay here till I go to
Antelope Peak and bring up Johnson, the station-keeper. You can't go
with me, because it's full twenty-five miles, if not more, and you can't
walk twenty-five steps. But those Mexicans are going to come back while
I am gone--I know they are, because they haven't taken any plunder with
them yet. They'll hide the horses in the mountains, most likely, and
then go down to the river to look for me; and after that they'll come
back here, and they'll look for us high and low.'
"I knew that what he said was true, every word of it; and the only
thing he could do was to find me a good hiding-place a good ways off
from the house, but still near enough for me to see the house, and the
window where the dead man lay. Well, first I watched David till out of
sight, and then I watched the window, and then I watched and peered and
looked on every side of me, till my eyes grew blind from the glaring sun
and the shining sand.