"That's me," he ejaculated. "Right over there, down below those two
oaks! Ever there?"
"No."
"My _studio_'s there now;" giving impressive accent to the word.
All the while these few words were passing he scrutinized me with
unconcealed curiosity, puzzled, as well he might be, by my dress and
equipment. Finally, after I had tied Kaweah to a tree and seated myself
by the easel, and after he had absently rubbed some raw sienna into his
little store of white, he softly ventured: "Was you looking out a
ditch?"
"No," I replied.
He neatly rubbed up the white and sienna with his "blender,"
unconsciously adding a dash of Veronese green, gazed at my leggings,
then at the barometer, and again meeting my eye with a look as if he
feared I might be a disguised duke, said in slow tone, with hyphens of
silence between each two syllables, giving to his language all the
dignity of an unabridged Webster, "I would take pleasure in stating that
my name is Hank G. Smith, artist;" and, seeing me smile, he relaxed a
little, and, giving the blender another vigorous twist, added, "I would
request yours."
Mr. Smith having learned my name, occupation, and that my home was on
the Hudson, near New York, quickly assumed a familiar me-and-you-old-fel'
tone, and rattled on merrily about his winter in New York spent in
"going through the Academy,"--a period of deep moment to one who before
that painted only wagons for his livelihood.
Storing away canvas, stool, and easel in a deserted cabin close by, he
rejoined me, and, leading Kaweah by his lariat, I walked beside Smith
down the trail toward Copples's.
He talked freely, and as if composing his own biography, beginning:
"California-born and mountain-raised, his nature soon drove him into a
painter's career." Then he reverted fondly to New York and his
experience there.
"Oh, no!" he mused in pleasant irony, "he never spread his napkin over
his legs and partook French victuals up to old Delmonico's. 'Twasn't H.
G. which took her to the theater."
In a sort of stage-aside to me, he added, "_She_ was a _model_! Stood
for them sculptors, you know; perfectly virtuous, and built from the
ground up." Then, as if words failed him, made an expressive gesture
with both hands over his shirt-bosom to indicate the topography of her
figure, and, sliding them down sharply against his waistband, he added,
"Anatomical torso!"
Mr. Smith found relief in meeting one so near himself, as he conceived
me to be, in habit and experience. The long-pent-up emotions and
ambitions of his life found ready utterance, and a willing listener.
I learned that his aim was to become a characteristically California
painter, with special designs for making himself famous as the
delineator of mule-trains and ox-wagons; to be, as he expressed it, "the
Pacific Slope Bonheur."
"There," he said, "is old Eastman Johnson; he's made the riffle on
barns, and that everlasting girl with the ears of corn; but it ain't
_life_, it ain't got the real git-up.
"If you want to see _the_ thing, just look at a Gérôme; his Arab folks
and Egyptian dancing-girls, they ain't assuming a pleasant expression
and looking at spots while their likenesses is took.
"H. G. will discount Eastman yet."
He avowed his great admiration of Church, which, with a little leaning
toward Mr. Gifford, seemed his only hearty approval.
"It's all Bierstadt, and Bierstadt, and Bierstadt nowadays! What has he
done but twist and skew and distort and discolor and belittle and
be-pretty this whole dog-gonned country? Why, his mountains are too high
and too slim; they'd blow over in one of our fall winds.
"I've herded colts two summers in Yosemite, and honest now, when I stood
right up in front of his picture, I didn't know it.
"He hasn't what old Ruskin calls for."
By this time the station buildings were in sight, and far down the
cañon, winding in even grade round spur after spur, outlined by a low,
clinging cloud of red dust, we could see the great Sierra
mule-train,--that industrial gulf-stream flowing from California plains
over into arid Nevada, carrying thither materials for life and luxury.
In a vast, perpetual caravan of heavy wagons, drawn by teams of from
eight to fourteen mules, all the supplies of many cities and villages
were hauled across the Sierra at an immense cost, and with such skill of
driving and generalship of mules as the world has never seen before.
Our trail descended toward the grade, quickly bringing us to a high bank
immediately overlooking the trains a few rods below the group of station
buildings.
I had by this time learned that Copples, the former station-proprietor,
had suffered amputation of the leg three times, receiving from the road
men, in consequence, the name of "Cut-off," and that, while his doctors
disagreed as to whether they had better try a fourth, the kindly hand of
death had spared him that pain, and Mrs. Copples an added extortion in
the bill.
The dying "Cut-off" had made his wife promise she would stay by and
carry on the station until all his debts, which were many and heavy,
should be paid, and then do as she chose.
The poor woman, a New Englander of some refinement, lingered, sadly
fulfilling her task, though longing for liberty.
When Smith came to speak of Sarah Jane, her niece, a new light kindled
in my friend's eye.
"You never saw Sarah Jane?" he inquired.