But Jeff saw him not. With mind and will bent on one object--to reach
the first habitation, the “Summit,” and send back help and assistance to
his wounded comrade--he urged Rabbit forward. The mare knew her rider,
but he had no time for caresses. Through the smarting of his hands he
had only just noticed that they were badly burned, and the skin was
peeling from them; he had confounded the blood that was flowing from a
cut on his scalp, with that from the wounded horse. It was one hour yet
to the “Summit,” but the road was good, the moon was bright, he knew
what Rabbit could do, and it was not yet ten o'clock.
As the white outbuildings and irregular outlines of the “Summit House”
began to be visible, Jeff felt a singular return of his former dreamy
abstraction. The hour of peril, anger, and excitement he had just passed
through seemed something of years ago, or rather to be obliterated with
all else that had passed since he had looked upon that scene. Yet it
was all changed--strangely changed! What Jeff had taken for the white,
wooden barns and outhouses were greenhouses and conservatories. The
“Summit Hotel” was a picturesque villa, nestling in the self-same
trees, but approached through cultivated fields, dwellings of laborers,
parklike gates and walls, and all the bountiful appointments of wealth
and security. Jeff thought of Yuba Bill's malediction, and understood it
as he gazed.
The barking of dogs announced his near approach to the principal
entrance. Lights were still burning in the upper windows of the house
and its offices. He was at once surrounded by the strange medley of
a Californian ranchero's service, peons, Chinese, and vaqueros. Jeff
briefly stated his business. “Ah, Carrajo!” This was a matter for the
major-domo, or, better, the padrone--Wilson! But the padrone, Wilson,
called out by the tumult, appeared in person--a handsome, resolute,
middle-aged man, who, in a twinkling, dispersed the group to barn and
stable with a dozen orders of preparation, and then turned to Jeff.
“You are hurt; come in.”
Jeff followed him dazedly into the house. The same sense of remote
abstraction, of vague dreaminess, was overcoming him. He resented it,
and fought against it, but in vain; he was only half conscious that his
host had bathed his head and given him some slight restorative, had said
something to him soothingly, and had left him. Jeff wondered if he had
fainted, or was about to faint,--he had a nervous dread of that womanish
weakness,--or if he were really hurt worse than he believed. He tried to
master himself and grasp the situation by minutely examining the room.
It was luxuriously furnished; Jeff had but once before sat in such an
arm-chair as the one that half embraced him, and as a boy he had dim
recollections of a life like this, of which his father was part. To
poor Jeff, with his throbbing head, his smarting hands, and his lapsing
moments of half forgetfulness, this seemed to be a return of his old
premonition. There was a vague perfume in the room, like that which he
remembered when he was in the woods with Miss Mayfield. He believed he
was growing faint again, and was about to rise, when the door opened
behind him.
“Is there anything we can do for you? Mr. Wilson has gone to seek your
friend, and has sent Manuel for a doctor.”
HER voice! He rose hurriedly, turned; SHE was standing in the doorway!
She uttered a slight cry, turned very pale, advanced towards him,
stopped and leaned against the chimney-piece.
“I didn't know it was YOU.”
With her actual presence Jeff's dream and weakness fled. He rose up
before her, his old bashful, stammering, awkward self.
“I didn't know YOU lived here, Miss Mayfield.”
“If you had sent word you were coming,” said Miss Mayfield, recovering
her color brightly in one cheek.
The possibility of having sent a messenger in advance to advise Miss
Mayfield of his projected visit did not strike Jeff as ridiculous.
Your true lover is far beyond such trivialities. He accepted the rebuke
meekly. He said he was sorry.
“You might have known it.”
“What, Miss Mayfield?”
“That I was here, if you WISHED to know.”
Jeff did not reply. He bowed his head and clasped his burned hands
together. Miss Mayfield saw their raw surfaces, saw the ugly cut on his
head, pitied him, but went on hastily, with both cheeks burning, to say,
womanlike, what was then deepest in her heart:
“My brother-in-law told me your adventure; but I did not know until I
entered this room that the gentleman I wished to help was one who had
once rejected my assistance, who had misunderstood me, and cruelly
insulted me! Oh, forgive me, Mr. Briggs” (Jeff had risen). “I did not
mean THAT. But, Mr. Jeff--Jeff--oh!” (She had caught his tortured hand
and had wrung a movement of pain from him.) “Oh, dear! what did I do
now? But Mr. Jeff, after what has passed, after what you said to me when
you went away, when you were at that dreadful place, Campville, when you
were two months in Sacramento, you might--YOU OUGHT TO HAVE LET ME KNOW
IT!”
Jeff turned. Her face, more beautiful than he had ever seen it, alive
and eloquent with every thought that her woman's speech but half
expressed, was very near his--so near, that under her honest eyes the
wretched scales fell from his own, his self-wrought shackles crumbled
away, and he dropped upon his knees at her feet as she sank into the
chair he had quitted. Both his hands were grasped in her own.
“YOU went away, and I STAYED,” she said reflectively.
“I had no home, Miss Mayfield.”
“Nor had I. I had to buy this,” she said, with a delicious simplicity;
“and bring a family here too,” she added, “in case YOU”--she stopped,
with a slight color.
“Forgive me,” said Jeff, burying his face in her hands.
“Jeff.”
“Jessie.”
“Don't you think you were a LITTLE--just a little--mean?”
“Yes.”
Miss Mayfield uttered a faint sigh. He looked into her anxious cheeks
and eyes, his arm stole round her; their lips met for the first time in
one long lingering kiss. Then, I fear, for the second time.
“Jeff,” said Miss Mayfield, suddenly becoming practical and sweetly
possessory, “you must have your hands bound up in cotton.”
“Yes,” said Jeff cheerfully.
“And you must go instantly to bed.”
Jeff stared.
“Because my sister will think it very late for me to be sitting up with
a gentleman.”
The idea that Miss Mayfield was responsible to anybody was something new
to Jeff. But he said hastily, “I must stay and wait for Bill. He risked
his life for me.”
“Oh, yes! You must tell me all about it. I may wait for THAT!”
Jeff possessed himself of the chair; in some way he also possessed
himself of Miss Mayfield without entirely dispossessing her. Then he
told his story. He hesitated over the episode of the blacksmith. “I'm
afraid I killed him, Jessie.”
Miss Mayfield betrayed little concern at this possible extreme measure
with a dangerous neighbor. “He cut your head, Jeff,” she said, passing
her little hand through his curls.
“No,” said Jeff hastily, “that must have been done BEFORE.”
“Well,” said Miss Mayfield conclusively, “he would if he'd dared. And
you brought off that wretched money in spite of him. Poor dear Jeff.”
“Yes,” said Jeff, kissing her.
“Where is it?” asked Jessie, looking round the room.
“Oh, just out there!”
“Out where?”
“On my horse, you know, outside the door,” continued Jeff, a little
uneasily, as he rose. “I'll go and--”
“You careless boy,” said Miss Mayfield, jumping up, “I'll go with you.”
They passed out on the porch together, holding each other's hands, like
children. The forgotten Rabbit was not there. Miss Mayfield called a
vaquero.
“Ah, yes!--the caballero's horse. Of a certainty the other caballero had
taken it!”
“The other caballero!” gasped Jeff.
“Si, senor. The one who arrived with you, or a moment, the very next
moment, after you. 'Your friend,' he said.”
Jeff staggered against the porch, and cast one despairing reproachful
look at Miss Mayfield.
“Oh, Jeff! Jeff! don't look so. I know I ought not to have kept you!
It's a mistake, Jeff, believe me.”
“It's no mistake,” said Jeff hoarsely. “Go!” he said, turning to
the vaquero, “go!--bring--” But his speech failed. He attempted to
gesticulate with his hands, ran forward a few steps, staggered, and fell
fainting on the ground.
“Help me with the caballero into the blue room,” said Miss Mayfield,
white as Jeff. “And hark ye, Manuel! You know every ruffian, man or
woman, on this road. That horse and those saddle-bags must be here
to-morrow, if you have to pay DOUBLE WHAT THEY'RE WORTH!”
“Si, senora.”
Jeff went off into fever, into delirium, into helpless stupor. From
time to time he moaned “Bill” and “the treasure.” On the third day, in a
lucid interval, as he lay staring at the wall, Miss Mayfield put in
his hand a letter from the company, acknowledging the receipt of the
treasure, thanking him for his zeal, and inclosing a handsome check.
Jeff sat up, and put his hands to his head.
“I told you it was taken by mistake, and was easily found,” said Miss
Mayfield, “didn't I?”
“Yes,--and Bill?”
“You know he is so much better that he expects to leave us next week.”
“And--Jessie!”
“There--go to sleep!”
At the end of a week she introduced Jeff to her sister-in-law, having
previously run her fingers through his hair to insure that becomingness
to his curls which would better indicate his moral character; and spoke
of him as one of her oldest Californian friends.
At the end of two weeks she again presented him as her affianced
husband--a long engagement of a year being just passed. Mr. Wilson, who
was bored by the mountain life, undertaken to please his rich wife and
richer sister, saw a chance of escape here, and bore willing testimony
to the distant Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield of the excellence of Miss Jessie's
choice. And Yuba Bill was Jeff's best man.
The name of Briggs remained a power in Tuolumne and Calaveras
County. Mr. and Mrs. Briggs never had but one word of disagreement or
discussion. One day, Jeff, looking over some old accounts of his wife's,
found an unreceipted, unvouched for expenditure of twenty thousand
dollars. “What is this for, Jessie?” he asked.
“Oh, it's all right, Jeff!”
But here the now business-like and practical Mr. Briggs, father of a
family, felt called upon to make some general remarks regarding the
necessity of exactitude in accounts, etc.
“But I'd rather not tell you, Jeff.”
“But you ought to, Jessie.”
“Well then, dear, it was to get those saddle-bags of yours from that
rascal, Dodd,” said little Mrs. Briggs meekly.