fever which this place has in store for most strangers. The _petite_
frame of the wife resisted the enemy to whom the stalwart man was forced
to yield; and with untiring devotion she watched by him through the long
days and the lonely nights. He needed sleep, the doctor said; and she
crept about like a little mouse. But, hanging over him, and listening to
his low, irregular breathing, such a terror would seize her that,
bending close to his ear, she would plead, "Ray--Cousin Ray--are you
alive? Speak to me, please." Then the heavy eyes would open for a
moment, and she remain quiet, till her fears got the better of her
judgment again. But never a look of reproach came into the weary eyes,
and never a word from the white lips, though his life had nearly been a
forfeit to her loving, but impatient spirit.
Nor did she once fly into a passion during the long days of his
convalescence; but when he had quite recovered, she proved that she had
not left her temper behind her in the South, where he, according to her
accusation, had left his tongue. There were days in which he seemed to
live only in a dream, so silent were his lips; but the office which had
been bestowed upon him, almost against his will, was ably and faithfully
filled--though a bend of the head or a single terse sentence was given,
where other men would have deemed volumes of speech necessary. It was no
wonder that his wife flew into a rage, when, as sometimes happened, she
had recounted to him the troubles and trials of the day--which were not
few--and found, at the end of an hour's harangue, that he had neither
heard nor understood a word of what she had said, but seemed to waken
from a trance at the little pettish shake she gave his arm. Then she
would accuse him of not loving her, bewail her sad lot, and vow to grow
silent and unloving like himself. After a season of storming on her
part, and utter silence on his, she would creep back to her old place
beside him, to find her kiss returned, and any cunningly devised
question, calculated and shaped toward reconciliation, answered by him,
kindly and calmly as ever.
One afternoon, while Cousin Ray sat in his office--silent, preoccupied,
and moody as usual--the din and confusion of an extensive dog-fight
disturbed his reveries. A cloud of dust and dogs rolled up to the
office-door, and the next moment the attorney of the Territory stood in
the street, a club in one hand and a "rock" in the other. A few
well-aimed blows soon freed "the under-dog in the fight" from his
half-dozen assailants; and with a half-sneaking, half-confident air, the
little ugly thing--part cur, part _coyote_, with a slight tinge of
sheep-dog--followed his deliverer to the office. When evening came, the
dog shyly, but persistently, followed his newly-elected master home; and
Mrs. Jenny, after first bitterly railing both at her husband and the
dog, proceeded to set supper before them with equal care and
conscientiousness. Next morning she found occasion to anathematize
Arizona in general and Tucson in particular; and, her eye falling on the
new acquisition, she instantly attacked him.
"Get away with you! Of all things in creation you're the ugliest, and
_your_ name should be Tucson, too."
And Tucson it was, from that day out. The dog soon learned to understand
Mrs. Jenny as his master did, only he could not be brought to endure her
bursts of temper with the same gentlemanly calmness. His meals were as
well and regularly provided as though he had a well-founded claim to the
best of treatment; and of an evening, when Cousin Ray was absent, he was
left at home, and admitted to the sitting-room, where a small piece of
Mrs. Jenny's dress-skirt was tacitly admitted to be his privilege during
his master's absence. But only during his absence: as soon as his
footstep was heard approaching from the street, Mrs. Jenny seemed
suddenly to discover the dog's proximity, and with a threatening "You
get out!" the dress-skirt was quickly withdrawn, while Tucson, made wise
by experience, would spring to a safe distance, and there flash defiance
at her, with his white teeth and his glittering black eyes.
Last night, however, the edge of the dress-skirt had been carefully
gathered up from the floor, and Tucson, on growling his dissatisfaction,
had been turned into the cold, open hall, where he met his master with a
little whine when he came home, late, and more moody and buried in
thought than ever. Nevertheless, he stooped to pat the dog's shaggy
head, before entering the room, with a half-drawn sigh. Mrs. Jenny had
well merited the reproach she always flung at her husband, this night,
so silently and noiselessly she moved around the room. Cousin Ray cast
on her just one look--that said more than all the words she had spoken
for years; but she did not heed it, and, with another sigh, at the
remembrance of the letter signed "Margaret," which she had found in his
pocket that morning, he sought the couch where neither sleep nor peace
came to the two. Early the next morning he had gone to the office, but
returned before noon, and mounted his stout _bronco_, being accompanied
by a small number of Americans and an old Mexican guide.
It was not the first time Mrs. Jenny had helped equip and furnish a
cavalcade of this kind, for a prospecting or mining expedition; and,
unbidden, she brought out her husband's warmest wraps and her best
stores from the larder. For a moment her cheeks blanched, as, from a few
chance words she caught, she was led to believe that the object of the
journey was the finding of the firmly-believed-in Jesuit, or Hidden
Silver-mine. But her husband volunteered no explanation; and she would
show him, for once, that she could refrain from asking questions. As he
approached and bent over her to bid her good-by, the fatal white
envelope that had so angered her yesterday, again gleamed from an inside
pocket; and, hastily drawing back, she spoke sharply in answer to his
cordial words:
"You need _never_ come back to me with that letter in your pocket.
Never--never!"
And, passing in through the hall-door, she saw Tucson quenching his
thirst eagerly, as preparing for a long run, at his basin on the floor.
Quick as thought she had caught him up in her arms, and, carrying him to
the door, she flung him with all her force against Cortez, who was just
moving off, with his master on his back.
"Go along with your master, you ugly brute. _I_ never want to see you
again--never, never!" and the heavy door closed with a loud bang.
Then she went back to her household duties, never heeding that the sun
had reached the meridian, and never pausing till material and strength
together were thoroughly exhausted. At last, after obstinately brushing
down the curls that would as obstinately spring up again, she drew near
to the window. She never knew how long she stood there; but when the
women by the _acequia_, in the tree-bordered field, away down from the
house, packed the linen they had made a pretence of washing all day,
into their large, round baskets to carry home for the night, Mrs.
Jenny--uttering her verdict on the people and the place--turned sharply
on her heel, and opened the box containing her outdoor garments. Her hat
was soon tied on, and a heavy shawl thrown over her arm, to guard
against the cool of the night that might overtake her. Pleasantly
returning the greeting that all who met her offered, she went unmolested
on her way till she reached the last huts of the Papagoes--who burrow
here, half underground, at a respectable distance from the better class
of Mexicans. From the door of a stray _adobe_, that looked like an
advance-post of rude civilization among these wicker-huts, a female
voice, in the musical language that the roughest of these Mexicans use,
called after her:
"Holy Virgin, _señora_, are you not afraid of the Apaches?"
But, like the youth who bore "the banner with the strange device," she
passed on, heedless and silent, to all appearances, but saying, within
her stubborn little heart, "Indians or no Indians, _I'm_ going to Cousin
Will's."
In less than an hour's time, the barking of dogs fell on her ear, and,
though no trace of fence, orchard, or barn could be seen, she knew that
in and beyond that grove of mesquite-trees lay Cousin Will's
possessions--counted one of the finest farms in the Territory. Directly
she turned from the road into an open space, where a low, solid _adobe_
house and two or three dilapidated _jacales_ represented a comfortable
farm-house and extensive out-buildings, to the right of which a large
field of waving corn stretched downward to the river. Back of the house
blossomed a little garden, the scarlet geranium covering almost the
whole wall; from the garden the ground fell abruptly to the water, where
a clump of willows and cotton-woods shaded a large cool spring. But the
most surprising feature of this Arizona scene was a spring-house,
which, though built of _adobe_, looked just as natural, and held just as
rich, sweet milk as any spring-house found in the Western States.
Mrs. Jenny, however, had no time to advance to this spot, even had such
been her intention. The barking of the dogs had called a dozen or two of
swarthy little Cupids from the _jacales_ and other resorts of the
_peones_, who, with a simultaneous shout, had rushed in a body to the
house of the master, announcing the coming of the unexpected visitor.
Cousin Will and his wife--one of those grand, black-eyed women, with the
bearing of a princess, whom we find among the old Spanish families--met
the sister-in-law long before she reached the house. Cousin Will's wife
greeted her sister-in-law cordially as "Juana;" while Mrs. Jenny held to
the more formal "Doña Inez," which she had never yet dropped--perhaps on
account of a fancied likeness between her and Margaret, of whom she had
secretly begged a most minute description from one of the younger
brothers in her uncle's house, at home.
"Why did Brother Ray let you come out here alone?" asked the older
brother, almost indignantly.
Doña Inez, who understood English, smiled a good-humored, but expressive
smile; noticing which, Mrs. Jenny supplemented, without the least
resentment: "And, besides, he wasn't at home to try. He started out this
morning with Blake, and Goodwin, and old Pedrillo."
"To look for the Hidden Mine of the Padres? Oh, the foolish, foolish
boy! Had I known how determined he was to go, I should not have left him
last night. Will he never stop dreaming and chasing after shadows?"
Cousin Will was full twenty years his brother's senior; and it was,
perhaps, the recollection of the almost fatherly love he had always
shown for the younger brother that made Mrs. Jenny suddenly, when Doña
Inez had left the room, fling her hat on the floor, herself on the
lounge, and give way to the tears that had gathered in her heart all
day. Cousin Will knew her too well to offer a single word of comfort or
consolation; but when her convulsive sobs had ceased at last, he told
her, in answer to her quick, impatient questions, all he knew of the
letter, its contents and consequences.
In the old archives of Tucson, to which Ray, by virtue of his office,
had access, he thought he had found sufficient proof of the existence of
the old silver ledge, and sufficiently clear advices of its location, to
warrant him in making a search for it. Fully aware of the many dangers
to which any party he might organize for that purpose would be exposed,
he had long hesitated--hesitated, too, partly on account of his wife's
violent opposition, and partly because there were few, whom he would
select, willing to go with him, where hundreds had already perished from
the Indian's arrow and the want of food and water. Three days ago, the
letter from Margaret had found its way to him. She was not long for this
world, she said, and, poor and in distress--abandoned by her husband,
who had been beggared by the war--she pleaded that Ray should care for
the two children she must leave to the cold charity of strangers, if she
died.
"What will you do about it?" his brother had asked. And then Ray had
unfolded to him what the brother called one of his day-dreams. He would
find the mine, load Jenny with the treasures its discovery would bring,
and send her back to the States, to find Margaret, or the children (if
she were dead), while he remained behind to develop and finally dispose
of the mine, before joining his wife. He knew what Jenny had undergone
in this country, for his sake; he knew how well she loved him, and he
trusted that, with her noble instincts, she would aid him in carrying
out his projects in regard to Margaret and her children--neither of whom
he ever intended to see.
Since she had once given way to softer feelings, Jenny's better self
arose against the hard, cruel spirit that had prompted her to turn from
all of Ray's attempts at kindly explanation. Bitterly she regretted the
harsh words she had uttered when her eyes first fell on that miserable
letter; and, like serpent's fangs, the words she had called after him on
parting, struck again and again into her own bleeding heart. Restlessly
she tossed on her bed all night--the first to discover the approach of a
band of Apaches, from the uneasy stamping and the frightened wickering
of the mules--she was the only one who insisted that Tucson's bark could
be heard among the gang of _coyotes_ that made night hideous with their
howls. With the first gleam of the coming day she was up; and, in spite
of all her brother-in-law could say, in spite of the suspicious
footprints that marked the ground in the neighborhood of the
mule-_corral_, she started for home, alone and unprotected, as she had
come the night before.
The gorgeous sunrise had no charm for her; unheeding, her eye passed
over the landscape, that was like the smile of a fair, false woman--soft
and alluring to the eye--a bright mask only, veiling death and
destruction from those who were blinded by it. When near the town, a
small, ragged-looking object came ambling swiftly toward her.
"What--Tucson?" and then, apostrophizing the dog, who crouched in the
sand at her feet with a pitiful whine: "You mean little deserter!
Couldn't you hold out as long as your master? And I know your master has
not come back yet." Nor _had_ he--though she entered the house with an
insane hope that she might meet the grave eyes peering out from the
gloom of the darkened hall. After another sharp reprimand, she prepared
Tucson's breakfast from a part of her own; and then flew into a passion
and drove the dog from the house, because, instead of tasting a
mouthful, he insisted on dragging her to the door by the dress-skirt,
and barking and howling in turn, when she refused to come.
Later in the morning, when she had occasion to go "down town" for
something, she recounted how the dog had shrunk from the fatigues of the
prospecting-trip, and had returned to his comfortable quarters at home.
"But I drove him from the house; and I guess he has gone to overtake his
master now--I don't see him around any more."
He _had_ gone to overtake his master--but not alone. The dog's strange
bearing had excited suspicion--here, where people are always on the
alert for danger and evil of all kinds. Before the sun was well up, a
little band of well-armed citizens was on the trail that Oray Granville
and his friends had travelled but the day before.
Well for Jenny that her eye never caught the meaning of the looks thrown
on her as she passed through the straggling streets back to her own
home; well for her that the soft-voiced _señoras_, who came to her in
the dusk of the evening, could check the word of sympathy that rose from
the heart to the lip. Ah, me!
And in Jenny's voice there was a new tone; a new light was in her eye,
and--a new greeting in her heart for Cousin Ray. If he would only come
soon! Of course, he could not return for a day or two; perhaps not for a
week; but when he did come--
"Petra," said Jenny, "you must play me Oray's favorite air
to-night"--and she hastened to the corner where the harp of the girl,
who was a pet of Mrs. Jenny's, and Ray's too, was generally kept.
"No, _señora_--no; not this night," remonstrated the girl. "The wind
howls so dismally--and there is no moon in the sky; and then, you know,
I cannot sing."
Petra was whimsical, and what she said was true: the wind passed with a
low, sobbing sound through the bare, wide hall, and swept up to the
door, where it shook the lock as with living fingers.
Mrs. Jenny drew back the curtain and laughed.
"In our country, people don't like to own that they're moon-struck; but
you are right--the night is black as ink, and--why--there is quite a
company coming up the hill toward us, with lights and torches. Going to
the governor's house, probably; but who can they be?"
"We can slip out of the back-door, directly, and look over to the house:
then the men cannot say that we have undue curiosity," suggested Anita,
desperately; and Mrs. Jenny dropped the curtain.
Petra's blanched face drooped low, over a book she had snatched up from
the table; and Anita's hands were clasped in a silent prayer to the Holy
Virgin. But the train came nearer, and--"Hark! they stop here--at this
door--it is Ray--Cousin Ray!" And Jenny was on the threshold--where half
a dozen gloomy, earnest faces met her gaze.
There was a horse there, too--stamping with a half-frightened motion,
and a low, shivering neigh; and as she sprang forward with a shriek--a
terrified question rising unconsciously to her lips--a dog flew at her
with an angry howl, tearing at her garments, and making frantic efforts
to prevent her touching the motionless form on the back of the horse.
To Jenny's ear the dog's wild yells spoke terribly plain her own cruel
"Never--never--never!" but among the men there was a hasty murmur that
the beast had gone mad, from running so long without food and water.
There was a flash and a sharp report--Tucson's career had come to a
close. And Jenny lay fainting in the arms of the sobbing women.
_A BIT OF "EARLY CALIFORNIA."_
That many strange and wonderful things happened in early times in
California, is so trite a saying that I hardly dare repeat it. As my
story, however, is neither harrowing nor sentimental, I hope I may
venture to bring it before the reader.
Long before the great Overland Railroad was built, there entered one day
one of the largest mercantile establishments in San Francisco a
handsome, athletic man, whose fresh, kindly face showed a record of
barely five-and-twenty years, and whose slender fingers belied the iron
strength with which he could hold and tighten the threads forming the
net into which malefactors are said, sooner or later, always to run. If
he _was_ a detective officer, he had friends, because he had a warm
heart; and in spite of all the dark phases of life that were brought to
his notice every day, he had not learned to disbelieve in the bright
side, or the better instincts of humanity.
The chief clerk of this establishment was Captain Herbert's (the
detective officer's) most intimate friend, and he had come to bid him
good-bye--perchance to charge him to guard the "fatherless and the
widowed," should the trip on which he was about to start out end
disastrously to him. "Early Californians" realized, better than any
other class of people, the uncertainty of life--particularly with those
who had to cope with the desperadoes of that time; and the captain
intended to start out as usual--with the determination to do or to die.
"By-the-by," said young Taylor, laughing, to the senior partner of the
firm, studying the morning paper in the counting-room, "Mr. McDonald has
been silent for so long that I think it would be a good job, and an
economical one, to commission the captain to hunt up the junior partner
of this firm, at the same time, and bring him in with the absconding
cattle-agent."
The old gentleman took off his glasses, and folded the paper.
"Yes; it's time Harry was home. I'm really getting uneasy about him.
They may have tempted him with the prospect of a whole string of wives
as he passed through Salt Lake--whereas here he can have only one."
"Give me his _carte-de-visite_, or the color of his hair and eyes,
height, breadth, and weight, and I'll bring him, sure!" laughed the
captain.
"Thank you kindly, captain; but I don't know whether Mr. McDonald would
appreciate your kind attentions; particularly," continued the old
gentleman, "if enhanced by those little steel bracelets you bring into
requisition sometimes."
Twenty-four hours later the captain was hurrying, as fast as the
stage-horses could run, to Salt Lake City, where, it was surmised, the
dishonest cattle-agent would be found. A few hours' vigorous hunt
convinced the captain that the object of his search was not
there--circumstances pointing backward to one of the smaller places he
had passed on his journey thither;--and the next stage that left had the
captain for its occupant again. The only other passenger beside the
captain and his one man, was a rather slender, well-built person, who,
like himself and assistant, had both hands full, literally, to keep from
being buried by the sides of bacon with which the stage was filled
almost to overflowing.
When night set in, the coats of the captain and his man, and the
woollen shirt of their travelling companion, seemed all to have been
made of the same material, thanks to the equalizing gloss which the
tumbling sides of bacon had spread over everything; but they fought the
pork as valiantly as ever true-believing Israelite had done. There was
little rest for them through the night, and no sleep; the treacherous
bacon-sides, that had been closely packed to serve as pillows, would
unexpectedly slip away from under their weary heads; and the bacon
barricades, laboriously built, would descend like an avalanche of blows
and hard knocks, when left unguarded by the drowsy travellers.
Luckily the bacon was left, the next morning, at a little town where it
was wanted more than in the stage coach; and the captain, who had passed
nothing on the road without casting on it at least half of his keen,
official eye, gathered enough information here to feel confident of
finding his game in one of the little new places springing up on the
mail-line in Nevada. They reached the place next day at nightfall--it
was near the border of California--and the captain saw at a glance that
it would be warm work to cage any of the ill-favored birds who flocked
about this place. Warm work it would have been under any circumstances:
but made more difficult by the fact that the man in question had
absconded from his employers in British Columbia somewhere, had merely
passed through San Francisco with his plunder--some thirty-six thousand
dollars--and could have defied all the law officers in California, if
they came, as the captain did, with only the commission of the
victimized cattle-owner, but without the authority that the existing
relations between British Columbia and the United States made necessary.
Among the gamblers and roughs loafing about the hotel, the captain's
quick eye had soon lighted on the right man; and after quietly taking
his supper with his companions, he proceeded to arrest him. Of course
there was an outcry and a hubbub among the patrons of this hotel, and
the captain, who knew where his customer came from, gave the guilty man
to understand that lynching a man who was no better than a horse-thief,
was nothing unusual in California and Nevada; but that if he, the
prisoner, would promise to remain quietly up-stairs in the room with the
captain's man, he himself would go back into the bar-room and try to
persuade the people to desist from carrying out any horrible plans they
might have formed. The prisoner seemed to feel weak in the knees; asked
permission to lie down, and sadly but gently extended his hands to the
alluring steel wristlets which the captain persuasively held out.
Returning to the bar-room, the latter singled out the head bully,
approached him confidentially, and whispered that on him he must depend
for assistance in keeping his obstreperous prisoner from breaking away;
that he himself and his assistant were so tired out with a three-nights'
ride and the fruitless chase, that they could hardly keep their eyes
open; and that after seeing the landlord he would return and consult how
they had best manage to keep their man safe.