truth, she had exchanged greetings on the plains under circumstances
quite different from the present, as one, at least, had cause to remember.
“I do not recall a former meeting, madam. But you might have met me on
the plains. I was on my way to Portland when you saw me, if you saw me
at all. A frontier trading-post is no proper place to bring up a lot of
Indian half-breeds. I came here to educate my children.”
“Then your husband is a white man?”
“Yes.”
“I beg your pardon, but you do not speak and act like the other Indians I
have met.”
“I am a chieftain’s daughter, and I was educated in London. You spoke of
travelling in the Ranger train. Mr. Ranger is my husband’s brother.”
“Does Captain Ranger know of this?”
“I neither know nor care! One thing is certain. I shall do my best to
train and educate my children in such a way that he will be proud some
day to own them as relatives. I have the girls in school at the Academy
of the Sacred Heart. The boys are at the Brothers’ School.”
“Do you know Dr. McLoughlin?”
“Yes, and my husband knows him well. I saw him as the children and I
passed through Oregon City. He was very kind, and bade me be of good
cheer. He has an Indian wife himself, as you know. But he did not ask me
in to see her, so we did not meet.”
* * * * *
As Donald McPherson had not yet arrived in Portland, Mrs. Benson had
ample leisure for letter-writing.
“My dear Daphne,” she wrote, “a letter from Mr. McPherson awaited me,
as I expected. He had sent it forward by a courier from the plains, in
care of one of Dr. McLoughlin’s agents. I need not repeat its contents.
Suffice it to say, that I am serene and calm. God has been very merciful
to us all. Within the letter was a letter of credit, upon which I am now
able to draw ample funds. I will place on deposit, subject to your order,
all the money you will need. Do not hesitate to accept it. It is mine,
to do with as I choose; and this is my choice of methods to expend the
portion I have assigned to you.
“I have decided not to meet him till after you are a free woman, Daphne.
I know you and Donald will guard our secret carefully; but I have doubts
about Jean Ranger. She brought me that unsealed note, and, as you know,
she is such a precocious little witch she might have read it before
giving it into my possession. Could you, in some way, get at the truth of
this without letting her see just what you are after?”
To which Mrs. McAlpin replied: “I will not do Jean the injustice to
imagine for a moment that she would read a private note that was
intrusted to her care and honor. Tell Donald that I will honor him as my
step-father, but I will never see his face again. He was very patient
with me during all the trying years when the Juggernaut of public
opinion, combined with the inquisition of the law, kept us in bondage;
and I thank him for his patience with all my heart. I am as painfully
aware of the unconventionality of our proceedings as yourself, dear
mamma, but as what the public doesn’t know doesn’t disturb that composite
being in the least, we’ll keep our own counsel and be happy.
“My donation claim lies parallel to Sally O’Dowd’s. Captain Ranger’s
claim adjoins hers on the south,—a plan that implies foreknowledge, if
not foreordination.
“Mr. Burns and Albert Evans, our faithful teamster, have selected their
land adjacent to mine. Evans has chosen a double allotment, having in
prospect a wife who is a mere child, belonging to a neighbor about three
miles away. I am disgusted with the venality of the transaction, which
the child’s father regards with satisfaction, and the mother with tears.”
A few days later, Mrs. Benson wrote to Captain Ranger, as follows:—
“I have met here an interesting and highly educated Indian woman, who
says she is the wife of the post-trader you met in Utah. She says that
trader is your brother Joseph, whom for many years you mourned as dead.
She is here to educate her boys at the Brothers’ School, and her girls at
the Academy of the Sacred Heart.
“When we saw her on the plains, she looked nothing but an ordinary
squaw. Now she and the children are well and fashionably dressed, and
as presentable in every way as any family in this primitive hostelry;
and that is saying a good deal, for there are ladies here of high rank
and breeding from the Eastern cities, and also from over the seas. Mrs.
Ranger (she still answers to the name of Addicks) was educated in London,
she says, where, as the daughter of an Indian chieftain of the land of
the Dakotas, she was admitted into the most aristocratic circles. After
completing her education she returned to her native haunts and met your
brother, who made her his wife. She seems to have plenty of money; her
children are bright and intelligent,—the girls especially so, they being,
she says, more like their father than the boys; and for this, as you
know, there is a physiological reason.”
“I’ll see that woman the very first time I go to Portland,” said the
Captain, aloud, as he folded the letter deliberately.
“What woman?” asked Sally O’Dowd.
“Nobody in particular,” he answered, thrusting the letter hurriedly into
his pocket, and looking confused and foolish as he returned to his work.
The labor of felling, hewing, hauling, and finally raising into houses
the timbers for the big log buildings which were to afford homes for the
half-dozen or more families who had, by common consent, adopted a sort of
corporate method for residing upon and cultivating their claims, told
heavily upon the men, who, already depleted in strength by much hardship,
were poorly equipped for their tasks. But there was no shirking of duties
nor complaint over backaches, and the borderers’ homes arose like magic.
“How do you like the appearance of the new buildings?” asked Captain
Ranger, addressing Sally O’Dowd.
“Why should you ask me?” was the curt response.
Surprised at her reply but disposed to be communicative, he added: “If
all goes well, I’ll have a sawmill up yonder in the timber by this time
next year.”
“That’s none of my business,” she retorted testily.
He looked at her for a moment in blank astonishment. “Why isn’t it your
business?” he asked, at length. “Haven’t we agreed to first get you free
from a bad bargain, and after that take up our line of march together?
And won’t your belongings then be mine, and mine yours?”
“What about that other woman you are going to Portland to see? Do you
take me for an idiot, Squire?”
He looked her in the face for an instant, nonplussed. Then as the reason
for her change of manner dawned upon him, he threw back his head and
laughed heartily.
“So that’s what the matter with us, is it?” he exclaimed, approaching her
with a proffered caress. “We’ve been a trifle jealous, haven’t we?”
“Behave yourself, sir!” elbowing him away. “Go to Portland and see that
other woman. No doubt a party by the name of Benson is expecting you.”
He guffawed again, making her angrier still.
“Come, Sally; let’s have no more nonsense,” he said, after his laughter
had ceased, motioning her to a seat beside him on the doorway.
She stood irresolute.
“Very well, if you prefer to do so, you can sit a-standing, like the
Dutchman’s hen. I’ve been keeping a letter that’s been burning my pocket
for three days waiting for an opportunity to show it to you, Mrs.
O’Dowd; but you’ve been so shy I couldn’t touch you with a forty-foot
pole.”
“What do you suppose I care for your letters from that other woman?”
she asked, dropping into the space in the doorway, all eagerness and
attention, in spite of her disclaimer.
“Read it yourself, Sally. It is from my brother-in-law, Lije Robinson.”
“The latest sensation is the suicide of Sam O’Dowd,” the letter went on
to say, after the usual preliminaries of the border scribe.
“No!” cried the widow, now such _de facto_, rising to her feet and
turning deathly pale. “Sam wouldn’t commit suicide. He’d be afraid to
meet his Maker.”
“But he did it, Sally. Read on.”
“He left a confession, saying it was remorse that drove him to it,
and extolling his wife as a model woman, whom he had wronged beyond
reparation in every way imaginable.
“His mother is wellnigh crazy. The home the two of them had wrested from
his wife and her mother, in which the old woman had allotted to spend her
days, goes back to Sally now, as, by his confession, his mother has no
right to it.”
“Poor Sam!” cried the widow, dropping again into the proffered space in
the doorway. “He had his faults, but he wasn’t all bad. This letter and
his confession prove it. I shall try hard to think that he atoned for his
greatest crime by his voluntary death. But I’d be sorry myself to meet
the reception that he’ll get in heaven!”
“Why, Sally? What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Let the dead past bury its dead.”
Captain Ranger, who, in first proposing matrimony, had stated earnestly
that his heart was still with Annie, gazed tenderly at the weeping woman,
who arose and stood before him in a mute yet beseeching attitude, while
a warm love for her sprang spontaneously within him.
“Come, Sally dear,” he pleaded; “sit down by me again, and let us talk it
out.”
She obeyed mechanically, her frame convulsed with weeping.
“I can never talk again about a platonic union,” he said feelingly. “I
know that Annie would sanction our marriage now if she could speak to us;
and I believe with all my heart that she knows of our proposed relations,
and that she will, under the peculiar circumstances, also approve.”
Ah, John Ranger! Materialist as you used always to proclaim yourself, you
cannot, in the deepest recesses of your soul, rebel against the faith
that is “the evidence of things not seen.” What have you done with your
agnosticism?
“Captain,” said Sally, in a subdued tone, “I have seen the day when
I would have followed Sam O’Dowd to the ends of the earth if he had
commanded. I could and would have lived on the acorns of the forest
rather than have failed to be his wife. Do not ask me to love you now. I
cannot be your wife.”
“Are we not engaged?” he asked, astonished.
“Yes; conditionally. But I cannot think about it now. If I can ever bring
myself to think it right for me to be your wife, I will not hesitate to
tell you so. But not now, Captain; not now.”
She arose abruptly, and was gone.
XXXIV
_HAPPY JACK INTRODUCES HIMSELF_
“Here,” said Jean, the next morning, approaching her father, who was hard
at work by sunrise, “are the letters I promised to write to Mr. Ashleigh
and his mother. You stipulated that you should see them, as you will
remember.”
His head and heart were aching. “I don’t care a rap for your nonsense,”
he exclaimed. “Nothing’ll ever come of it. The fellow has never written
to you.”
“That’s so!” thought Jean, strolling off aimlessly into the woods.
“Daddie gave him our address as Oregon City. Oh, my God! can it be
possible that my other self has been married (or the same as married) to
Le-Le, the Indian slave?”
Giant trees rose often to the height of three hundred feet,—one hundred
and fifty feet from the ground without a limb,—and so straight that no
hand-made colonnade could equal them for grace and symmetry. As Jean
stood under these stately monarchs of the soil and listened to the soft
sighing of the wind among their evergreen leaves, she heard the roar of
rushing water. She clambered through a labyrinth of deciduous undergrowth
till she came to a horseshoe bend at the head of a gulch, over which the
water foamed and tumbled till lost from sight amid the tangled ferns and
foliage.
“Halloa!” cried a voice from an unseen source.
She looked in the direction whence the call seemed to proceed, and
beheld, standing on the opposite bluff, a typical young backwoodsman,
tall and shapely.
She returned the salutation by waving her sunbonnet, which she had been
swinging aimlessly by its strings, exposing her face and head to the
caress of the balm-laden air.
A minute later, and the stranger was by her side. She noticed that he
carried in a careless way a long, old-fashioned rifle; that a pipe was in
his mouth, and a pistol of the “pepper-box” variety protruded from the
leg of his boot.
“Are you the Ranger gal what got left at Green River?”
She turned ghastly pale at mention of the locality where her thoughts
were centred, but made no audible reply.
“My name is Henry Jackman,—better known as Happy Jack,” he said, as he
dropped the butt-end of his rifle to the ground with a thud, and stood
waiting for her to speak.
“I’ve heard of you before,” said Jean; “you are the man who’s been
talking sawmill to my daddie.”
“That’s what!”
“Then we may as well become acquainted. I am Jean Ranger, and I have an
older sister Mary and a younger one named Marjorie, besides my brother
Hal and two little sisters.”
“I seed yer dad yisti’dy an’ we talked things over. Thar’s a fine
prospec’ hyer fur a sawmill.”
“So I perceive.”
“Yer dad an’ me’s goin’ to go snucks.”
“I do not understand.”
“I mean pardners. He’s got the sabé an’ I’ve got the rocks, so we can
make a go of it. The kentry’s settlin’ up powerful fast, an’ thar’ll be
lots o’ demand for lumber for bridges an’ barns an’ houses an’ fencin’
an’ sich.”
“I see. We had a lot of spavined, wind-broken old horses for our sawmill
power in the States, sir.”
“Thar’s a water-power yander that beats hosses all to thunder, miss.”
“So I see, sir.”
“Thar’s millions o’ feet o’ logs in sight; an’ out yander in the
mountains is a place to build a flume, so we kin raf’ the logs down to a
lake that I found up thar in the woods. We’ll have a town here some day
an’ make things hum.”
“Have you often met my daddie?” asked Jean.
“I’m lookin’ fur him now, every minute. We’re goin’ to survey some
timber-land fur the mill-hands, farther up the crick. The curse o’ this
kentry is bachelders. Ah! here’s the Cap’n now. It’s lucky you’ve brought
along so many weemen folks, ole man; we’ll all be needin’ wives.”
This concluding remark brought the hot blood of indignation to the
cheeks of Jean as she turned to meet her father, who was carrying an ax
and a gun, followed by Mr. Burns, equipped with a clothes-line and a
carpenter’s square.
“What in thunder are you doing out here, Jean?” asked her father, taking
no notice of the stranger’s remark. “Don’t you know that the woods are
full of wild beasts?”
“I’ve seen nothing wilder than your prospective ‘pardner,’” she answered
aside. “He seems harmless; but he’s an ignoramus and a boor.”
“Very well, Jean. But ruin home now, and help the women folks. They have
a whole lot o’ work on hand, getting settled, and you do like to shirk.”
“Thar’ll be lots more of it for ’em to do afore this timber is all sawed
up,” added the prospective “pardner.” “It takes a mountain o’ grub to
keep a lot o’ loggers in workin’ order. I’m mighty glad, Cap’n, that
you’ve got a lot a weemin folks; we’ll need ’em in our business.”
“Yes,” retorted Jean. “They’re as handy to have in the house as a coffin
with the proper combination of letters on the plate!”
Mr. Burns laughed; but Mr. Jackman dropped his lower jaw and looked the
picture of an exaggerated interrogation point. “What’s the gal drivin’
at?” he asked under his breath; and her father said gravely, “Stop
talking nonsense, Jean.”
It was mutually agreed upon that a logging-camp should be started at
once, and the ground prepared during the coming rainy season for the
foundation and erection of a combined sawmill, planer, and shingle-mill,
and that Captain Ranger should return, as early as practicable, to the
States, _via_ the Isthmus, to purchase the necessary machinery, which
could not at that time be procured on the Pacific Coast.
* * * * *
Soon thereafter Captain Ranger went to Portland to purchase the necessary
supplies for the winter’s use. Arriving there, he repaired, in his best
Sunday suit, to the primitive hotel, and inquired for Mrs. Addicks.
The lady appeared, after long waiting, fastidiously gowned and so
thoroughly at ease that all his thought of the superior quality of the
white man’s blood departed as he saw her, and he stood in her presence in
embarrassed silence.
“Won’t you be seated, Mr.—”
“Ranger,” he said, fumbling his hat awkwardly and shambling into the
proffered chair.
“To what am I indebted for this visit, Mr. Ranger?”
“You will please excuse me, ma’am,” he said, crossing his legs clumsily,
“but I have come to see you on a little business that concerns us both.
Your husband is my brother.”
“Then, sir, you can tell me something about his family. Do his parents
yet live?”
“They were alive and well at last accounts; but it takes two months or
more for a letter to go and come. Our grandmother died recently.”
“The dear old lady he calls ‘Grannie’?”
“Yes.”
“My husband will be grieved to hear of this. I must write to him at
once. Can you give me any particulars concerning her last days? Did she
remember Joseph?”
“She had a dream of him, and said his mother would live to see him again.”
“I used to wonder why my husband was so reticent about his family
affairs. I supposed when we were married that he would take me back to
live among his people. But he steadfastly refused to do it, and would not
even let me know their post-office address. But I know all about it now.
He left home under a cloud.”
“But it was not nearly so bad as he thought. I set his mind at rest on
that score when we had that last interview. The poor fellow was in daily
dread of discovery and pursuit for more than a dozen years.”
The woman arose and paced the floor in silence, the coppery hue of her
complexion enriched by the blood that rushed to her face. She paused
and stood before him, her hands folded over the back of a chair, as she
waited for him to speak again.
“I did your husband a grievous wrong when I saw him at the post, madam. I
must confess that I had no idea that the Indian woman he told me that he
had married was—”
She waved her hand in protest. “There, there, Mr. John; no flattery, if
you please. If you had seen me as I was that day, you would have felt
justified in spurning your brother’s wife. It was not my fault, though,
that he kept me like a common squaw. Your conduct is fully forgiven,
since it resulted in an open declaration of independence on my part.
“There were a dozen young chieftains and half as many white men who
aspired to my hand and heart in my girlhood; but Joseph was a king among
them all. But we had not been married a month before I found that I
was doomed to the same treatment, as his wife, that other Indian wives
endure. So I lost heart, and accepted the situation as stolidly as my
father would have done if he had been doomed to perpetual slavery.”
“Did Joseph always treat you badly after your marriage?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders.
“Hard times came to our tribe. The Hudson Bay Company’s business
languished. We had a succession of bitter cold winters, with dry, hot
summers following. The different tribes became involved in war. Then
famine came, and pestilence. We will draw a veil over what followed, Mr.
John. Joseph will never beat his wife again; I have sworn it!
“The fluctuations of fortune brought us at last to the Utah trading-post,
where you saw Joseph. We were prosperous then, and might have lived like
white folks; but he seemed to prefer to keep me situated like an ordinary
squaw, so I gave him all he bargained for. But, ugh! I did detest the
life. Finally my father died and left me an ample inheritance, which is
mine absolutely. I will educate my children and take them to London,
where there is no prejudice against my people such as abounds in this
‘land of the free and home of the brave’!”
“Do you think Joseph is able to repay a part of the money we lost on his
account?”
“My husband will waste more money in a single night sometimes, at the
gambling-table, than he will expend on his family in a year. I think he
is quite able to pay his debts.”
“How would you like to visit our people back in the old home?”
“When our children reach the age of six or seven years, they begin to
outgrow the Indian style and complexion,” she said; “but I’ll not take
them among my husband’s people while they look like little pappooses.”
“Why not take them out to my donation claim? My family will be glad to
welcome you.”
“Couldn’t I take my nurse along?”
“If you did, some fool would coax her to marry him, so he and she could
hold a double quota of land. Better leave her here with your little ones,
or set her to washing dishes.”
“In either case our landlord would marry her himself, I fear. But I’ll
risk it.”
The older girls were out of school for a walk, in the company of their
brother John and a black-robed Sister, and thus were permitted at this
juncture to enter their mother’s presence for an introduction to their
uncle.
“John and Annie are Rangers, as you see, sir. My husband is very proud of
them.”
“And well he might be,” thought the Captain, as he scanned them
critically.
* * * * *
The sun was sinking behind the Coast Range the next evening, throwing the
picturesque valley of the Willamette into deep shadows, and lighting up
the tops of the Cascade heights with tinges of rose and gold and purple,
when a carriage and pair were seen ascending the narrow grade leading
to the great log house occupied temporarily by all the families of the
Ranger colony. The unexpected arrival of the Captain created a sensation,
which was not at all abated when he vaulted to the ground, followed,
before he could turn to assist her, by a large, well-formed, and
faultlessly attired Indian woman, with a sheen of gold in her raven-hued
hair.
“Mrs. O’Dowd,” said the Captain, offering his hand, “allow me to
introduce Mrs. Ranger Number Two,—my brother Joseph’s wife.”
XXXV
_ASHLEIGH MAKES NEW PLANS_
When Henry Jackman saw the wife of Joseph Ranger, whom he had known
at the trading-post in Utah as Mr. Addicks, and understood the full
significance of her arrival as a welcome visitor and relative of the
Ranger family, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away, exclaiming:
“I’m dummed!”
“No wonder Uncle Joe was captured by that fine creature,” said Jean to
herself. “She must have been as handsome in her girlhood as Le-Le.” And
for the first time in her life she fainted away.
When she awoke to consciousness, which was not till the next morning,
she was on the big white bed in the spare chamber, whither she had been
carried by loving friends and treated through all the watches of the
night by the Little Doctor with the untiring faithfulness of a devoted
friend.
“Take that Indian away! I cannot bear the sight of her,” cried Jean, as
her copper-colored aunt approached her, proffering kindly offices.
“She must be humored in her whims till she has had time to recover,
Mrs. Ranger,” said Mrs. McAlpin, aside. “There’s a love story and a
disappointment behind all this. Her antipathy is not against you, but
another Indian princess whom she thinks she has cause to remember.”
“I didn’t come here to make wounds, but to heal them,” faltered Mrs.
Ranger, as, with an indistinct conception of the trouble, she left the
room, followed by Sally O’Dowd.
“I want you to know that you have healed my wounds,” said Sally. “I was
miserably and unreasonably jealous of—I didn’t know of whom—for a whole
week before you came to us. I shall never be such a simpleton again.”
“My wise brother says you and he have concluded to marry each other, Mrs.
O’Dowd.”
“We were engaged for a short time, but when I overheard him talking to
himself about going to Portland ‘to see a woman,’ and he wouldn’t take me
into his confidence about her, I got angry and jealous, and treated him
shabbily.”
They found the Captain, of whom they went in quest, in his favorite seat
on the front doorstep.
“I don’t see why you and Joseph cannot go together to visit your parents
this winter,” said Mrs. Ranger, coming at once to the point. “Your
partner can have ample time while you are away to get the foundations
ready for the mill and other buildings. I will write to Joseph this very
night and urge it if you say so.”
The Captain looked inquiringly at Mrs. O’Dowd.
“I quite agree with your brother’s wife,” she said, extending her hand.
“I was an idiot to act toward you as I did.”
“With your permission, I will write at once to Joseph, explaining
everything and urging him to come to the ranch at once. The courier goes
out to-night, so there is no time to lose.”
“Yes,” said Sally, whose eyes were blazing with a new joy, “it is just as
Wahnetta says. You can be spared better this winter than later. Will you
go if Joseph consents to accompany you?”