heard footsteps crunching nearer and nearer in the sand. They were the
Mexicans, sure enough, coming up from the river, and passing within a
few steps of my hiding-place. Both carried heavy cudgels, which they had
brought with them from where they had been cutting wood in the morning.
When they got near the house they stopped talking, and I saw them sneak
up to it, and then vanish around the corner, as though to visit the
kitchen first. A few minutes later I saw them come out of the bar-room,
and, oh, heavens! I saw they were trying to follow my husband's
footprints, that led directly to the verde-bush behind which I was
hiding; but the wind had been blowing, and it seemed hard for them to
follow the trail. Still they came nearer; and the terror and suspense,
and the sickening fear that came over me, when I saw them brandishing
their clubs and bringing them down occasionally on a clump of
verde-bushes, wellnigh took what little sense and breath I had left, and
I verily believe I should have screamed out in very horror, and so
brought their murderous clubs on my head at once, to make an end of my
misery, if I had had strength enough left to raise my voice. But I could
neither move nor utter a sound; I could only strain my eyes to look.
After a while they got tired of searching, and went back to the house,
where they stood at the window a moment to look in on the dead man, as
though to see if he had stirred; then they went in at the bar-room, and
came out directly, loaded with plunder.
"One of the men carried both Mr. Hendricks's and my husband's rifle,
and the other had buckled on Mr. Hendricks's revolver. They had thrown
aside their _ponchos_, and one had on my husband's best coat, while the
other wore Mr. Hendricks's soldier-overcoat. Even the hat off the dead
man's head they had taken, and also, as was afterwards found, the black
silk handkerchief he had on his neck when they killed him. Again they
took their way over toward the mountains, and then everything around me
was deadly still. Oh, how I wished for a living, breathing thing to
speak to, then! I should not be the poor, half-demented creature that I
am to-day, if only a dog could have looked up at me, with kind,
affectionate gaze. But the half-open eyes of the man seemed staring at
me from the window, and I kept watching it, half thinking that the
dreadful, mangled face would thrust itself out.
"By and by the _coyotes_, scenting the dead body in the house, came
stealthily from all sides, surrounding the house, and howling louder and
louder when they found that they were not received with their usual
greeting--a dose of powder and ball. At last one of them, bolder or
hungrier than the rest, made a leap to get up to the window; but just as
his fore-paw touched the window-sill something was hurled from the
window, which struck the wolf on the head and stampeded the whole
yelping pack. This was too much; and I must have fainted dead away, for
my husband said that when they found me I was as stiff and cold as the
corpse in the house. What I thought had been hurled from the window was
only a piece of a cracker-box, used as target, and put out of the way on
the broad _adobe_ window-sill, where the paw of the _coyote_ had touched
it and pulled it down over him. I would not go into the house, and as
Mr. Johnson thought it best to give information of what had happened at
Stanwick's Ranch, we all came down here together, and I have been here
ever since. My husband is waiting for a chance to go back to Texas. I
wish we could get back; for I don't want to be buried out here in the
sand, among the _coyotes_ and rattlesnakes, like poor Mr. Hendricks."
The ambulance had been waiting at the door for me quite a while; so I
thanked the woman for "telling me all about it," and tried to say
something cheering to her. When I turned to leave the room she clutched
at my dress.
"Stop," she said, nervously; "don't leave me here in the room alone;--I
can't bear to stay alone!"
She followed me slowly into the bar-room, and when the man there went to
the ambulance to speak to the captain, she crept out after him and stood
in the sun till he returned.
"The poor woman," said I, compassionately; "how I pity her!"
"The poor woman," echoed the station-keeper; "those two Greasers have
killed her just as dead as if they had beaten her brains out on the
spot."
The shades of night were already falling around Mohawk Station when we
reached it. It was quite a pretentious house, built of _adobe_, and
boasting of but one story, of course; but it is not every one in Arizona
who can build a house with four rooms,--if the doors _do_ consist of old
blankets, and the floor and ceiling, like the walls, of mud.
A discharged soldier kept the station now--a large yellow dog his sole
companion. The man slept on the same bed that had borne Hendricks's
corpse, and the cudgel, with the murdered man's blood dried on it, was
lying at the foot of it.
"And where is his grave?" I asked.
The man's eye travelled slowly over the desolate landscape before us.
There were sand, verde, and cactus, on one side of us, and there were
sand, verde, and cactus, on the other.
"Well, really now, I couldn't tell. You see, I wasn't here when they put
him in the ground, and I haven't thought of his grave since I come. Fact
is, I've got to keep my eyes open for live Greasers and Pache-Indians,
and don't get much time to hunt up dead folks's graves!"
_LONE LINDEN._
"It is just the place for you; Clara will find it sufficiently romantic,
Miss Barbara can have Snowball and Kickup both with her, and you, dear
friend, will be pleased because the rest of us are."
The letter was signed "Christine Ernst;" and Mrs. Wardor, when she had
finished reading, continued in her quiet, even tones:
"What an unaccountable being she is; I thought her cold and unfeeling,
because she dismissed that fine young fellow so unceremoniously, when we
all thought her heart was bound up in him."
"Ah, me!" sighed Clara, fair of face, blue-eyed, and with feathery curls
of the palest yellow. "How little we know of the sorrow that sits silent
in our neighbor's breast. The sentiment--"
"Oh, bother sentiment!" broke in Miss Barbara, impetuously, flinging
back the heavy braids of unquestionably red hair that had strayed over
her shoulder. "Daisy, my snowball, imagine, if you can, a large lot, a
meadow, or paddock, or something with grass, for Kickup, you and me! Oh,
won't it be jolly, though?" And seizing the sweet Daisy, a squat,
broad-faced Indian girl, whom Barbara's father, an army contractor, had
picked up somewhere around Fort Yuma, they executed a species of
war-dance that sent chairs, crickets, and bouquet-stands flying, and
caused Mrs. Wardor and her other companion to exchange significant
head-shakings.
Having suddenly loosed her hold of Daisy in the wildest of the dance,
and sent her spinning into the corner where her head struck the whatnot,
Miss Barbara approached the elder lady, panting, and with deep
contrition.
"Forgive me, Aunt Wardor; I shan't forget my young-lady manners again
for a whole week. But it did seem such a relief, just the thought of
getting away from this cramped little house, and into the open air
again, that I could not help being rude to Lady Clara." She seized the
slender fingers of the young lady, in spite of the little spasmodic
motion with which they seemed to shrink from the hearty grasp.
"But, Barbara," urged Mrs. Wardor, somewhat mollified by the
affectionate "Aunt," "when a girl of your age avers that she is a young
lady, how can she constantly forget herself, and act the child and the
romp again."
A flush passed over the girl's face, a handsome face, full of life and
animation, which a few little freckles seemed really to finish off, as
she turned sharply from both, and seated herself in the most stately
manner at the grand piano, the recent birthday gift of her father.
Barbara was his only daughter, "and he a widower," who was surprised one
day to find that she was receiving the marked attentions of a young
gentleman matrimonially inclined, at the springs where she was spending
her vacations, with all the assurance and matter-of-course air of a
"grown-up lady," when he had never dreamed but that she was only a
child. He thought to cut the matter short by returning her instantly to
the seminary; but soon learned from the conscientious lady at the head
of the establishment that the young gentleman was persistent in his
devotions, and Miss Barbara as persistent in breaking the rules of the
institution. Then he bethought him of a lady whose calm dignity and
quiet self-possession had always somewhat oppressed him when he had
occasionally met her in his wife's parlors, during that estimable
woman's life time. And recollecting how his wife had honestly lamented
that her daughter could not live under the influences of a cultivated
mind, and the refined manners which she, herself, did not possess, he
went boldly to Mrs. Wardor one day, and proposed that she should take
charge of the self-willed girl, who insisted on being treated with the
consideration due a young lady owning a declared, though forbidden
lover. To Mrs. Wardor the proposition was acceptable; some years before,
true to the "gambling instincts" of an old Californian, her husband had
staked his all on some favorite mining stock, and, after losing, had
taken his chances of striking something better in the next world, by
blowing his brains out when he found himself "on bedrock" in this. Like
a sensible woman, she had given up her elegant establishment without
grieving very much, had secured a smaller house, and thought herself
fortunate in finding a class of boarders who shocked neither her
sensitive nerves nor her fastidious taste.
Among the very limited number was a young girl who had left the
Fatherland when quite young, and had been educated by an older brother,
since dead. Her love and talent for music, together with what she called
her Deutsche Geduld, had stood her in good stead, and Miss Ernst was now
considered one of the best music teachers on the Coast.
When Barbara Farnsworth was placed in her charge, Mrs. Wardor felt
justified in restricting the number of her boarders to two, outside of
this young lady--so liberal were the terms Mr. Farnsworth urged upon
her. The one other boarder besides Miss Ernst, was the fair lady with
the golden curls, who had lost mother and husband within the year, but
found an ample fortune at her disposal on the death of the latter. The
mother had been Mrs. Wardor's most cherished friend, and the fittest
place for Lady Clare, as Miss Barbara called her, seemed Mrs. Wardor's
house. Here she had found already domiciled Miss Ernst, who, a few
months later, to the astonishment of everybody, left her home and the
city, in consequence of a quarrel with her betrothed, as he was
supposed to be by people who knew other people's business better than
their own. A close friendship had sprung up between the two young women,
and Clara, it was surmised, was the only one who knew of Miss Ernst's
reasons for the unlooked for departure, just as Miss Ernst was the only
one who knew much, or anything, of Clara Hildreth's "heart-sorrows."
That she had had such sorrows, no one could doubt who looked into the
large blue eyes, with their melancholy expression, or noticed the droop
of the small, gracefully-poised head. It was not surprising that this
tender, clinging creature should miss the prop and staff afforded by the
resolute yet sympathetic nature of her friend; and when the letter came
suggesting that Mrs. Wardor spend the summer in San Jose, where
Christine could be one of her family again, the idea was seized upon
with avidity by all, and in three days' time, Miss Barbara had convinced
her father, Clara, and Mrs. Wardor, that the place Christine Ernst had
described was just the place for them.
"Let's go at once," said Miss Barbara, late in the evening, with her
usual precipitation; but Mrs. Wardor quieted her by enumerating the
thousand and one things to be done before the removal could be
effected--first and foremost among which was the task of securing the
house before it could be moved into.
It was decided that Mrs. Wardor and Clara should go to San Jose on the
next morning's train and return at night, leaving Miss Barbara to the
care of her "Indian maid" and the servants in the house.
Arrived at the depot in San Jose, they found Christine, whose dark hair,
olive skin, and Roman features utterly belied her purely German descent.
She embraced Clara with the protecting air of an older sister; and
pressing Mrs. Wardor's hand, led them to the carriage awaiting them.
"You have worked too hard, I fear, Christine," said Mrs. Wardor. "You
look tired and thin."
"Not tired," was the answer, "but I am among strangers, and have so
missed my home. You know how we Germans cling to people we love."
"Yes?" Perhaps Mrs. Wardor was thinking of the lover, discarded, among
strangers in a strange land. Clara held her friend's hand, and asked how
far they would have to go--she felt that Christine was pained.
"Only a short way; but the owner of the place is a queer genius, a
German, like myself, with whom no one can live in peace, they say. But I
know we can, though he insists on occupying a little hut in one corner
of the grounds. Fifty people have wanted the place, but he has never
been in a humor to let it since the last occupant moved out. I mean to
bring the charms of his mother-tongue to bear upon him, though I know it
will make me hoarse for a week, more especially as he is slightly deaf."
The carriage had stopped at the gate, and the three women made their way
through a well-kept garden to a little shanty they espied at the
farthest end of it. The dwelling-house itself consisted of a one-story
_adobe_, to which had been added, much later, a frame building of two
stories. The _adobe_ part of the building contained kitchen, breakfast
and sitting-room, from which a low bay-window reached out into the
garden, where flowers stole up almost to within the room, and the ivy,
mingling with the bright green of the climbing rose, reached upward to
soften the abrupt joining of the gray _adobe_ with the glaring white of
the frame portion. This, though the more stately part of the building,
had not the home-look of the _adobe_, around the flat roof of which ran
a low railing, making a balcony of it for the service of the new wing.
"How happy we shall be here," exclaimed Clara, with genuine delight. At
this moment a strange figure, clad in loose garments, and with flowing
gray beard, deep-set eyes, and holding a long pipe in his mouth, came
into sight. Depositing the pipe carefully behind a garden vase, the man
advanced with dignified yet courteous bearing. He looked with the
questioning scrutiny peculiar to people hard of hearing, from one to the
other; but when Christine's words reached his dull ears at last, it was
to fair-faced Clara he turned inquiringly.
"Wie sagten Sie, Fräulein? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
Christine repeated her question, and he turned slowly toward her. "I
thought it was she who spoke the German," motioning toward Clara; "but I
like your looks, too," he continued, taking Christine's hand into his
with a sudden, fatherly impulse. "And you would come and live in my
house, lady," he said, addressing Mrs. Wardor in his German-English.
"Take care--I say it to you--take care. It is a lonely place, and makes
to be alone in the world every one who lives in it. See me, an old man,
alone--alone. It is a bad spell on the place; it will make you alone,
too."
The three women exchanged glances. Alone? Whom had they belonging to
them? It was only their friendship for each other that made their
"alone" different from that of the old man before them.
"And these flowers, so beautiful," he continued, "will you love them,
too? I will nurse them for you; but don't be afraid--the old man will
not be troublesome to you." He had misunderstood the movement among
them; they were only congratulating each other on having accomplished so
easily what Christine had been taught to look upon as a difficult task.
They hastened to assure him how glad they would always be to have him
with them; and he looked wistfully at Clara again, muttering, "Ah, I
thought she was the German."
"There it is again," said Christine, turning to her; "I never try for a
beau but you coax him away from me with your blue eyes and yellow curls.
I shall act out my character of a dark Spanish beauty some day, and
leave you with a jewel-hilted dagger in your heart for luring my own
true love from his faith to me."
They followed their guide to the other side of the house, where, near
his own cabin, arose a little knoll or mound, evidently artificial,
though not smoothly finished. A sparse growth of grass covered it, and
on one side there was a ragged depression, as though a tree might have
been torn from the soil at some past time. Just above this stood a
linden tree, lonely enough. There were no other trees on this side of
the house, though pepper, poplar, and cypress trees were distributed
with a good deal of taste through the rest of the grounds.
"Lone linden," mused Clara; and though the words were spoken low, the
old man seemed to have read it from her lips.
"The other people have called it so, and it seems right. The only one
left," he said, softly passing his hand over the bark of the tree. "You
would not think how many they were at one time; but they are all dead
and gone. My dear ones all lie buried here."
"Here?" echoed Clara, touching the mound.
"No, not the bodies, you know; es ist nur die Erinnerung," he turned to
Christine. She bowed her head silently, and with the deep
"verstandnissvolle" look of her honest eyes she had won the old man's
confidence forever.
They turned back to the more cheerful part of the garden, trying to
shake off the gloom the linden with its deep shadow had thrown on them,
and Clara railed at her friend for looking solemn as an owl. "Not a line
of poetry have you quoted to-day--not a note have you sung."
At the same time the old man was saying to Mrs. Wardor, "See, lady, all
these lilies, white as snow. At home, in Germany, they were my mother's
pet flowers, and I am keeping these to be planted on my grave." And
Christine stooping to break three of them, chanted dolefully--
"'Drei Lilien, drei Lilien--
Die pflanzt mir auf mein Grab.'"
"There"--she turned to Clara--"that's music for you."
Right here, let me confide to the reader Christine's great failing--the
weak point in this strong nature. She had a queer habit of keeping up a
sort of running comment on any conversation that took place in her
presence--any occurrence that came under her observation; comment in the
shape of bits of poetry or song, that she sang softly to herself. But
she _could_ not sing--and that was the great failing. Think of a
music-teacher who could not, if life depended on it, sing a dozen notes
in the same key, but would drop lower and lower, "till her voice fell
clear into the cellar"--according to the girl's own statement.
Mr. Muldweber seemed loath to part with his prospective tenants, but was
assured that the close of the week would find them at Lone Linden. When
they reached the depot, the train that was to take Mrs. Wardor and Clara
back to the city was ready, and Christine had only just time to
apostrophize Clara's eyes--
"Lebt wohl ihr Augen, ihr schönen blauen,"
before it started.
On reaching home, Miss Barbara met them at the threshold, with flaming
cheeks and sparkling eyes. "Such a romp as I have had with Snowball,"
she explained; and the Indian girl laughed like an imp of the devil.
Mrs. Wardor chided the young lady for romping, but Clara drew back from
the girl with an uncomfortable feeling. Clara's cheeks boasted but a
delicate pink tinge at best, and to-night, in the glare of the gas,
after the day's fatigue, she looked almost haggard beside the robust,
health-glowing girl.
"How old are you, Lady Clare?" she asked in the course of the evening.
"Twenty-two. Why?"
"Oh, nothing; only when I get to be as old as you are I shall wear black
constantly, just as you do, particularly if I have lost all my color,
too."
"A wise resolution. I never had your color, though. Neither my face nor
my hair was ever red--nor my mother's, before me. Perhaps she did not
stand over the hot fire as much as your mother did."
"Yes--I know they say mother 'lived out' as cook when she first came to
California; but then--_she_ didn't have to marry to get a home."
It was all out now; though the girl sent the shaft almost at random, it
had struck the sore spot. Clara had married for a home. Her mother had
expended her meagre fortune on Clara's education, never doubting that
the girl's loveliness would attract a goodly number of suitors, from
whom the most suitable, that is, the wealthiest, could be chosen.
Whether Clara was less worldly or more romantic--at any rate she lost
her heart to a young man in society, who was considered an ornament of
that society--though it would have puzzled a common mortal to discover
why. His upper lip boasted a full, silken moustache, and he could turn
over the music sheets, standing beside the young lady performing on the
piano, with unequalled grace; he sang a languid tenor, and could fasten
his eyes on a lady with a melting, melancholy look, as if sighing in his
heart, "could I but die for thee."
It was what he spoke out aloud to Clara, when, after months of intimate
acquaintance, he understood that Clara's mother wanted to see her
daughter "settled." But he didn't die; he only bewailed his fate, his
inability to make her his cherished wife, and lay all the treasures of
the Golden State at her feet. To quote Christine's hard, unsympathetic
opinion, he was "a graceless monkey, a fortune hunter, without ambition
enough to try for a living for himself, let alone for the woman he
professed to adore." Amid tears and protestations of breaking hearts and
darkened lives they parted: Clara to give her hand, at her mother's
entreaties, to a man of great wealth and corresponding age and
respectability--her lover to continue his search for a wife who could
boast of money besides beauty and amiability.
Miss Barbara's heart was good in the main, and she would not have hurt
Clara as she did had she not been wild with an excitement for which
there seemed no cause. She was heedless, to be sure; and her
temper--well, she had red hair.
Only three days later, early in the morning, we see them all at the
depot, and comfortably seated in the cars--Mrs. Wardor, Clara, Barbara,
and Daisy--with Kickup aboard the train, but in a different car--Kickup
being only an Indian pony, and the shaggiest kind of one at that. Miss
Barbara and "her maid," as she grandly styled the moon-faced Indian
sometimes, sat behind Mrs. Wardor and Clara--Clara and Barbara each
sitting nearest the window. Clara in deepest black, with the delicate
flush on her face, looked, the most interesting of young widows, and
whenever she raised her dove-like eyes, was sure to encounter the gaze
of the many who stood outside. Just as the sharp click of the
starting-bell rang through the cars, Clara, looking up, caught sight of
a figure that caused her heart to beat full and fast. Yet her face grew
pale as she noted the form of which the words "an elegantly attired
gentleman" would, perhaps, give the best idea.
He leaned against one of the wooden pillars supporting the depot roof,
with a dejected, melancholy air. Almost involuntarily Clara leaned
forward, but sank back the next moment, her face ablaze, her lips
trembling. The impish laugh of the Indian girl that had struck her so
unpleasantly on the night of her return from San Jose, again fell on her
ear, and Miss Barbara's irrepressible "te-he" mingled with it. Had she
then betrayed her heart's secret to these two foolish, giggling things?
Her cheeks burned with mortification, but in her heart there was a
strange gleam of happiness. He knew, then, that she was free; he had
heard of her leaving the city, and chose this delicate way of intimating
to her that.--Ah! well; she was still in deepest mourning, and must not
think--anything--for a while yet, at least.
Mrs. Wardor, her mind filled with doubts and misgivings as to whether
she had brought just the things she wanted for the summer in San Jose,
had noticed nothing of the little episode, but catching sight of Clara's
face as they left the cars, she exclaimed, with genuine gladness in her
tone, "Why, Clara, I know this summer in the country will do you good;
your eyes are bright with anticipation!"