I.

Lysander Sproul, driving his dun-colored mules leisurely toward the

mesa, looked back now and then at the winery which crowned its low hill

like a bit of fortification.

"If I'd really had any idee o' gettin' ahead o' him," he reflected, "or

circumventin' him an inch, I reckon I'd been more civil; it's no more 'n

fair to be civil to a man when you're gettin' the best of 'im; but I

hain't. I don't s'pose Indian Pete's yaller dog, standin' ahead there in

the road ready to bark at my team like mad, has any idee of eatin' a

mule, much less two, but all the same it's a satisfaction to him to be

sassy; an' seein' he's limited in his means of entertainin' hisself, I

don't begrudge him. And the Colonel don't begrudge me. When a man has

his coat pretty well wadded with greenbacks, he can stand a good deal o'

thumpin'."

The ascent was growing rougher and more mountainous. Lysander put on the

brake and stopped "to blow" his team. Whiffs of honey-laden air came

from the stretch of chaparral on the slope behind him. He turned on the

high spring-seat, and, dangling his long legs over the wagon-box, sent a

far-reaching, indefinite gaze across the valley. There were broad acres

of yellowing vineyard, fields of velvety young barley, orange-trees in

dark orderly ranks, and here and there a peach orchard robbed of its

leaves,--a cloud of tender maroon upon the landscape. Lysander collected

his wandering glance and fixed it upon one of the pale-green

barley-fields.

"It's about there, I reckon. Of course the old woman'll kick; but if the

Colonel has laid out to do it he'll do it, kickin' or no kickin'. If he

can't buy her out or trade her out, he'll freeze her out. Well, well, I

ain't a-carin'; she can do as she pleases."

The man turned and took off the brake, and the mules, without further

signal, resumed their journey. Boulders began to thicken by the

roadside. The sun went down, and the air grew heavy with the soft,

resinous mountain odors. Some one stepped from the shadow of a scraggy

buckthorn in front of the team.

"Is that you, Sandy?"

It was a woman's voice, but it came from a figure wearing a man's hat

and coat. Lysander stopped the mules.

"Why, Minervy! what's up?"

"Oh, nothin'. I just walked a ways to meet you." The woman climbed up

beside her husband. "You're later 'n I 'lowed you'd be. Something must

'a' kep' you."

"Yes, I come around by the winery. I saw Poindexter over t' the Mission,

an' he said the old Colonel wanted to see me."

"The old Colonel wanted to see _you_, Sandy?" The woman turned upon him

anxiously in the yellow twilight. The rakishness of her attire was

grotesquely at variance with her troubled voice and small, freckled

face. "What did he want with you?"

"Well, he _said_ he wanted me to help him make a trade with the old

man,"--Lysander sent a short, explosive laugh through his nostrils; "an'

I told 'im I reckoned he knowed that the old woman was the old man, up

our way."

"Oh, I'm glad you give it to 'im that way, Sandy," said the woman

earnestly, rising to her habiliments. "Mother'll be prouder 'n a peacock

of you. I hope you held your head high and sassed him right and left."

Mrs. Sproul straightened her manly back and raised her shrill, womanish

voice nervously. "Oh, I hope you told him you'd stood at the cannon's

mouth before, an' wasn't afraid to face him or any other red-handed

destroyer of his country's flag. I hope you told him that, Sandy."

"Well, I wasn't to say brash," returned her husband slowly and

soothingly. "It wouldn't do, Minervy; it wouldn't do." Lysander uncoiled

his long braided lash and whipped off two or three spikes of the

withering, perfumed sage. "I talked up to 'im, though, middlin'

impident; but law! it didn't hurt 'im; he's got a hide like a

hypothenuse."

Mrs. Sproul drew a long, excited breath.

"I wish mother'd been along, Sandy; she'd 'a' told 'im a thing or two."

Lysander was discreetly silent. The sage and greasewood ended abruptly,

and a row of leafless walnut-trees stretched their gaunt white branches

above the road. Here and there an almond-tree, lured into premature

bloom by the seductive California winter, stood like a wraith by the

roadside. They could see the cabin now. A square of flaring and fading

light marked the open doorway. The mules quickened their pace, and the

wagon rattled over the stony road.

"Talk about increasin' the value o' this piece o' property!" the man

broke out contemptuously. "I told 'im it would take a good deal o' chin

to convince the old woman that anything would increase the value o' this

ranch o' hern, and danged if I didn't think she was right. I'd pegged

away at it two years, an' I couldn't."

"What did he say to that, Sandy?" demanded the woman, with admiring

eagerness.

"Say? Oh, he said the soil was good. An' I 'lowed it was,--what there

was of it; an' so was the boulders good, for boulders,--the trouble was

in the mixin'. 'Don't talk to me about your "decomposed granite,"' says

I: 'it's the granite what ain't decomposed that bothers me.' But

pshaw!"--and Lysander dropped his voice hopelessly,--"he ain't a-carin'.

I'd about as soon work the boulders as try to work him; he's harder'n

any boulder on the ranch."

The mules turned into a narrow road, and stopped before the stable, a

shackly, semi-tropical structure, consisting of four sycamore posts and

a brush-covered roof. The lower half of the firelit doorway beyond

suddenly darkened, and there was a swift, scurrying sound among the

bushes that intervened between the house and the shed. A succession of

heads, visible even in the deepening twilight by reason of a uniform

glimmering whiteness, appeared in the barnyard.

Mrs. Sproul ran over the number with a rapid maternal calculation.

"Where's the baby, Sheridan?"

"Grammuzgotim."

Lysander climbed out of the wagon, and came around to his wife's side.

"Shan't I h'ist you down, Minervy?"

She gave him her hand, and stood beside him for an instant,

meditatively, after he had lifted her to the ground.

"I guess I won't say nothin' to mother till you come in, Sandy. Be as

spry as you can with the chores. Mebbe M'lissy'll milk the cow fer you."

She turned, and went up the walk toward the house, her mannish attire

and the glimmering white heads that encircled her faintly suggestive of

Jupiter and his attendant moons.

The sea-breeze had died away, and the wind was blowing in cooler gusts

from the mountain; breezes laden with the aromatic sweetness of the

bay-tree and the heavy scent of the shade-loving bracken wandered from

far up the canon into the cabin and out again, only to find themselves

profaned and sordid with the smell of frying bacon.

A high, energetic voice was making itself heard even above the sizzle of

the meat and the voice of a crying baby.

"What under the sun makes ye set up that yell every night jest at

supper-time? Ye ain't a-lackin' anything, as I kin see, exceptin' a

spankin', and I'm too busy to give ye that. Hark! There comes your

mammy, now. Straighten up yer face and show 'er what a good boy you've

been."

Thus adjured, the baby brought his vocalizing to that abrupt termination

indicative of feeling not so deep-seated as to be entirely beyond

control, and scrambled toward the door on all fours, breaking in upon

the approaching planetary system, a somewhat dimmed and bedraggled

comet. Mrs. Sproul picked him up, and looked around the room

questioningly.

"What's M'lissy doin', mother?"

"Dawdlin'," answered the old woman, with a curtness that was eloquent,

lifting the frying-pan from the stove, and shaking it into a more

aggravated sputter.

"Is she upstairs?"

"I s'pose so. She gener'ly is, when there's anything doin' down."

Mrs. Sproul put her hand over the baby's mouth and called upward,

"M'lissy!"

There was a sound of slow moving above, plainly audible through the

unplastered ceiling, leisurely sliding steps on the stairs, and Melissa

appeared in the doorway. She was still elevated above them by two or

three steps, and leaned against the casement, looking down into the

smoke and disorder of the room with a listless, irresponsible gaze. A

tall, unformed girl, with a braid of red hair hanging across her

shoulder, and ending in a heavy, lustrous curl upon the limp folds of

her blue cotton dress.

The baby had resumed a subdued but dismal proclamation of the grief from

which his mother's return had afforded him but a temporary relief, and

Mrs. Sproul elevated her thin, anxious voice coaxingly.

"Lysander's late, M'lissy, and I thought mebbe you'd milk the cow fer

'im."

"Why, yes, of course," answered the girl, with a soft, good-natured

drawl, descending the remaining steps slowly. "Where's the milk-pail,

mother?"

"On top o' the chimbly," answered the old woman tartly, pointing with

the frying-pan to a bench in the corner. "If it'd 'a' been a snake,

it'd 'a' bit you."

The young girl crossed the room, and the satellites surrounding Mrs.

Sproul's chair, with an erratic change of orbit, transferred themselves

to the newcomer. The older sister took a handkerchief from the pocket

of her coat.

"You'd best tie this around your neck, M'lissy; it's gettin' chill."

The girl accepted it carelessly, and stood in the doorway tying the bit

of faded silk about her round, white throat.

"Where's the cow, mother?"

"She's staked on the 'fileree, t'other side of the barn. If ye don't

find her when ye git there, come an' ask." The old woman drawled the

last three words sarcastically.

Melissa smiled, showing a row of teeth, not small, but white and

regular.

"Oh, if she's got away, I know where she's gone."

"Yes, I'll bet you do. Some folks has a heap of onnecessary learnin'."

There was no demand upon Melissa's supply of undervalued information.

The cow was mooing reproachfully in a cropped circle of musky alfilaria

behind the shed. The moon had risen, and rested for an instant upon the

edge of Cucamonga, like a silver ball rolling down the mountain-side.

Melissa laid her arms on the spotted heifer's back, and gazed at the

landscape dreamily. Not discontent, nor longing, nor vague, troublesome

aspirations mirrored themselves in the girl's placid face. Gentle,

ease-loving natures, that might show in fair relief against a delicate

background of luxury, become dull and lifeless in contrast with the

coarser tints of poverty. In the parlance of those about her, Melissa

was "dawdlin',"--and those about us are likely to be just, for they

speak from the righteous standpoint of results.

The moon had floated high above Cucamonga,--so high that every nook and

fastness of the mountain lay revealed in her soft, nocturnal splendor;

even the tops of the mottled sycamores, far below in Sawpit Canon, were

touched with a vague, ghostly light; and still the council that sat in

Lysander Sproul's kitchen was loud-voiced and shrill. The children,

huddled in a corner that they might whisper and giggle beyond the reach

of manual reproof, had fallen asleep, a confused heap of dejected

weariness. The baby's head hung at an alarming angle from his father's

arm, and even the acrid, high-pitched notes of his grandmother's voice

failed to disturb the sleep of bedraggled innocence.

"So he's a-wantin' to develop the canon, is he? Time wuz when you'd 'a'

thought that canon wuz good enough even fer him, from the lawin' and the

lyin' and the swearin' he done to git his clutches onto it. Well, if he

wants to improve it, why don't he improve it? Nobody's goin' to hender."

"That's what I told 'im," answered her son-in-law, taking the pipe from

his mouth, and sending a halo of blue smoke about the head of his

slumbering charge. "He said he wanted to improve the water. 'Nobody's

goin' to kick at that,' says I; 'if they do, they're fools. I think the

old lady'll tell you to go ahead. I shouldn't be s'prised, though,' says

I, 'if she'd add that the water o' Sawpit Canon's good enough fer her

without any improvin'.'"

Mrs. Sproul glanced at her mother triumphantly.

"I told you Sandy talked up to him, mother. Oh, I do _wish_ you'd 'a'

wore your uniform, Sandy; then you could 'a' rose up before him

proudly, an' told 'im you'd fought the battles of your country before"--

"Oh, shucks, Minervy!" interrupted the old woman dejectedly; "what does

Nate Forrester care for anybody's country? What else'd he say,

Lysander?"

"He said--well"--the man hesitated, and hitched his high shoulders a

trifle uneasily--"he swore he hated to do business with a woman."

Spots of a deep, coppery red glowed through the tan of the old woman's

cheeks.

"He said that, did 'e, Lysander Sproul? Then he must 'a' found some

woman hard to cheat. Nate Forrester don't hate to do business with

nobody he can cheat. The next time you see 'im, tell 'im it's mut'chal."

"I told 'im that," answered Lysander grimly. "I told 'im he didn't hate

to do business with the hull female sect no worse than this partikiler

woman hated to do business with him; but I reckoned you wouldn't bother

'im if he wanted to go to work on the canon,--that'd be onreasonable."

"He hain't no notion o' doin' that," asserted the old woman

contemptuously. "Ketch him improvin' anybody else's water right. We're

nothin' to him but sticks to boil his pot. What's he up to now?"

"Well," rejoined Lysander skeptically, "he _said_ he wanted to divide

that upper volunteer barley-patch into ten-acre lots and put it onto the

market. An' he b'lieved he could double the water right by tunnelin'."

"Why don't he tunnel away, then? Nobody's a-carin'," demanded the old

woman shrilly.

"That's what I told 'im; and he 'lowed, of course, he wasn't a-goin' to

put money into another feller's water right. An' then he figured away,

showin' me how it'd increase the value o' this piece o' property; an' I

told 'im this property was 'way up now,"--Lysander sneered

audibly,--"consider'ble higher 'n most folks wanted to go; an' then he

went to blowin' about it, braggin' up the ranch, an' tellin' what a big

thing he done when he give it to you"--

The old woman broke in upon him fiercely.

"Did he say that, Lysander?" She turned, and bent upon her son-in-law a

quick, wrathful glance from under her shaggy brows; the muscles of her

weather-beaten face twitched nervously. "I'd 'a' give my right hand to

'a' heerd 'im. I'd like to have Colonel Nate Forrester try to say

anything to me about givin' anybody this ranch." She measured her words

bitingly. "I s'pose when a feller puts his pistol at yer head, and tells

you to hold up yer hands, and goes through yer pockets, if he happens to

overlook a ten-cent piece he _gives_ ye that much, does 'e? That's the

way Colonel Nate Forrester _give_ me this ranch. Loss Anjelus County

hadn't heerd o' him when I settled onto this claim, and it ain't heerd

no good of 'im sence."

The old woman's harsh, discordant voice rose higher with her wrath. The

baby stirred uneasily in his father's arms. Even Melissa raised her

eyes,--Melissa, who sat on the lowest step of the projecting staircase,

twisting and untwisting the faded blue silk handkerchief in her lap with

a gentle, listless monotony. It was impossible to tell whether ignorance

or indifference characterized the girl, so calm, so inert, so absent was

she, sitting in the half-shadow of the dimly lighted corner, her

lustrous auburn head outlined against the sombre-hued redwood of the

wall behind her.

There was a little hush in the room after the tempest.

"No, that's a fact,--that's a fact. Well--then--you see--" continued

Lysander, groping for his forgotten place in the recital. "Oh, yes,--I

got up and told 'im 'Addyoce,' as if I s'posed he was through, and

started off; an' he called me back, an' 'lowed mebbe the old folks

didn't have much loose change lyin' 'round to put into water

improvements; an' I told 'im I didn't know,--I reckoned you could

mortgage the ranch. From the way he talked, he'd make you a handsome

loan on it, and jump at the chance; an' after he'd hummed and hawed a

while, he offered to give you a clear title to Flutterwheel Spring if

you'd deed 'im your int'rest in the rest o' the canon. I told 'im it

wasn't my funeral. I'd tell you what he said, an' you could do as you

pleased."

The old woman fixed her small, shrewd eyes on her son-in-law.

"What else 'd he say, Lysander?"

"Nothin' much. Wanted me to use my influence with the old man!"

His mother-in-law gave a short, contemptuous sniff.

"I reckon he'd like to do business with the old man. What'd you tell

'im?"

"I told 'im I'd be sure to put my influence where it'd do the most good,

an' I 'dvised him to see you. I 'lowed him an' you'd git on peaceable as

a meetin' to 'lect a preacher,"--Lysander rubbed his gnarled hand over

his face, as if to erase a lurking grin,--"but he didn't seem anxious."

"I reckon not. Is that all he said?"

"'Bout all. He said it was a damned good trade."

"Ly_san_der!" Mrs. Sproul sprang up, placing herself between her husband

and the heap of slumbering innocents in the corner. "Ly_san_der

Sproul,--and you a father! This comes of consortin' with the ungodly,

and settin' in the chair of the scorner."

"Oh, come now, Minervy, I was only quotin'." Lysander's eye twinkled,

but he spoke contritely, with generous consideration for his wife's

condition, which was imminently delicate.

"Oh, you're hystericky, Minervy. You'd best go to bed," observed her

mother. "You're all tuckered out with yer walk. I guess Lysander's told

all he knows, hain't you, Lysander?"

"'Bout all,--yes. He followed me out to the wagon, and hinted something

about Poindexter wantin' help if he went to work on the tunnel, and

'lowed I'd find it handier to have a job nearder home, now that the

grape-haulin' was over. But I told 'im there was no trouble about that.

The nearder home I got, the more work I found, gener'ly. Pay was kind o'

short, but then a man must be a trifle stickin' that wouldn't do his own

work fer nothin'."

Lysander got up and carried the baby into the adjoining room, bending

his lank form from habit rather than from necessity, as he passed

through the doorway.

Mrs. Sproul, tearfully resentful of the charge of hysterics,

investigated the sleeping children with a view to more permanent

disposal of them for the night, a process which resulted in much

whimpering, and a limp, somnolent sense of injury on the part of the

investigated.

"I don't take much stock in Nate Forrester's trades," said the

grandmother, elevating her voice so that Lysander could hear; "there's

some deviltry back of 'em, gener'ly; the better they look, the more I'm

afraid of 'em. I don't purtend to know what he's drivin' at now, not

bein' the prince o' darkness, but I reckon he can wait till I do."