We lived on the coast of California, on the Spanish grant my
grandfather had purchased from the mission which still stands, deserted
and crumbling, in the Santa Brigida Valley. Our house, built long
before the Civil War, overlooked the lower end of the valley, from a
knoll above the salt marshes at the river-mouth. The house was built
in the form of a hollow square, surrounding a paved court. The walls
were of adobe,--sun-dried bricks of clay, mixed with a little
straw,--four feet thick, and pierced by small grated windows, designed
for loopholes more than for the admittance of light and air. The beams
and rafters were of roughhewn pine, carried down from the mountains by
the Santa Brigida Indians, a tribe long since extinct, and the same
patient workers had moulded and baked the old red tiles of the roof.
My father and my uncle Harry Selden had been brought up to the
half-Spanish life of old California. For ten miles along the coast and
six miles inland the land was theirs, and in those days three thousand
head of cattle, bearing my grandfather's brand, grazed on the mesas and
filed down in long lines to drink. When the brothers were young, the
grizzly still lingered in the hills, the tracks of deer and mountain
lion were everywhere, the quail trotted in thousands along the
river-bottom, and in the winter months the plains along the seacoast
were clamorous with flocks of wild geese, feeding on the rich grass.
But times were changing, and little by little, civilization was
creeping in. A church and a schoolhouse were built in the township
north of us; taxes were raised; and finally a party of surveyors
appeared, running a line for the new railway. My grandfather abhorred
the idea of a railway passing through his land; he made a bitter fight
and would not give in till his own lawyer showed him that if he refused
to accept what was offered for the right of way, the law would force
him to do so for the public good. He died a short time after the
trains began to run.
The brothers were young men at that time, and as their mother had been
dead for many years, their friends supposed that they would carry on
the ranch in a sort of family partnership. But Uncle Harry, in his
love of a wild and independent life, was my grandfather over again. He
announced that he had had enough of civilization, persuaded my father
to buy out his share of the Santa Brigida, and bade his brother and his
friends good-bye. I remember, when I was very small, how eagerly we
looked forward to the letters my father used to read aloud to us:
accounts of African gold-mining; of wanderings in Central America and
Mexico; of great cattle-ranches--estancias, Uncle Harry called them--in
the Argentine; of voyages along the barren Chilean coast: of storms and
shipwrecks among distant archipelagoes. In the end he settled as a
trader, a buyer of copra and pearl-shell, in the South Seas.
As for my father, he was content to marry and to stay at home, but he
clung to his cattle stubbornly, refusing to farm or to sell an acre of
his land and growing poorer with each year that passed. He often said
that we would never starve and that our land was constantly increasing
in value, but at such times my mother used to rise from her chair with
a sigh and walk out alone among her roses in the court. She was a
patient woman and she loved my father dearly, but I knew that the sale
of only a few acres among all our thousands would have provided her
with many things she craved. What with dry years and low prices, our
taxes ate up nearly all the profits from the cattle. We could never
afford a motor-car or the occasional trips to San Francisco of which
our neighbors' children gave me glowing accounts, yet outside of such
luxuries, I must own that we had little need of ready money. Our own
fat steers provided us and our men with beef; my mother was
superintendent of a garden which furnished more vegetables than we
could eat; and in the fall and winter game was still plentiful enough
to be a real resource.
Our circumstances had made me a rather serious boy, fond of solitude
and given to endless day-dreams--dreams of returning from vague
gold-mines or speculations in land with a fortune, to be invested in
the ranch and to provide my mother with travel, and rest, and pretty
clothes. On my rides to school along a five-mile stretch of coast,
where the pearly fog billowed about the hills and the Pacific broke
lazily beyond the dunes, I lived in a world of pure fancy, from which
the sight of San Isidro, with its single dusty street, its stores, and
hideous frame schoolhouse, recalled me daily with an unpleasant start.
All through the week I lived only for the coming Saturday, when I would
be free to shoot, or fish in the surf, or ride out with our men to
track down some band of half-wild steers, hidden in the thick oak scrub
of the foothills.
It was on a Saturday that my uncle came. I was fifteen that winter,
and ten years had gone by since he had visited us last, but I had not
forgotten his lean powerful figure, or the black eyes lighting up a
face tanned to an unfading brown, or the stories he had told a
wondering youngster of five, sitting on his knee by the fireplace.
The month was February, as I remember it, for the wild mustard was tall
and green on the hills and scattered cock-quail were perched on the
fence-posts, filling the air with the long sweet whistle of their
mating-time. We were early risers, all of us, and at dawn, as I was
eating the breakfast my mother had prepared, she asked me if I would
take my gun and try for some wild duck on the marshes. There would be
guests from San Isidro to-morrow, and a few brace of duck would be a
treat for people from the town. I assented joyfully, for such a
request meant that ammunition would be furnished from my father's
store, and I loved nothing more than the long lazy hours in a blind,
where one could watch the strings of wild fowl trailing across the sky.
I had good sport that morning, hidden close to a shallow pool behind
the dunes. As I waded across the marsh, carrying my gun and
half-a-dozen wooden decoys, a cloud of teal rose quacking from the
grass and headed seaward on beating wings. The redhead were beginning
to fly northward from their wintering grounds on the lonely Mexican
lagoons; small flocks of them, led by drakes with heads glinting like
burnished copper in the sunlight, rose from the creeks ahead of me and
sped away, low over the sand hills. At the place that I had chosen for
my shooting, I unwound the anchor-lines of the decoys, tossed them far
out into the pool, and built myself a rough shelter of pickle-weed,
strung on stakes pounded into the mud. I found an old piece of board
for a seat, loaded my gun, laid out a box of cartridges within easy
reach, and settled myself luxuriously to wait.
Next moment I glanced upward and crouched down lower than before,
cocking my old-fashioned hammer-gun. High in the air above the marsh,
a flock of sprig was descending in great spiral curves, the wind
humming musically through the rigid flight-feathers of their wings.
Lower and lower they swung, while my pulse raced as I peeped over the
edge of the blind. I could see the snowy breasts of the drakes, the
feathers of their long forked tails, and their heads turning this way
and that as they scanned the marsh warily for signs of danger. They
had seen the decoys, and as they swept past me, still out of range, I
called to them, imitating the feeble quack of the hen bird. Then,
while I held my breath, they turned again, low over the pool, and came
sailing straight at me--necks up and feet dropping to settle among the
decoys. My hands were trembling a little, but I took careful aim at
the old white-breasted leader, pulled the trigger, and saw him crumple
and strike the water with a mighty splash. Wild with alarm, another
drake came towering above my head, and leaning backward till I nearly
fell off my seat, I let drive with the left barrel and watched him fold
his wings and come down plunging to the grass.
I can recall that warm winter morning as if it were yesterday: the
steady thunder of the breakers, the perfume of the salt marsh, the
wisps of cloud drifting across a soft blue sky. Flock after flock of
wild fowl came speeding in from the sea, circled the marsh, set their
wings to alight, bounded upward, scattering, at the reports of my gun,
and headed back for the ocean--fast-vanishing dots above the dunes.
Once a wedge of geese passed at a great height overhead, flying
northward with slow steady wing-beats, thrilling me with the hoarse
music of their voices. My life seemed cramped and narrow as I gazed at
these free rovers of the sky, travelers beyond the far rim of the
horizon north and south.
The warm sun and the drowsy chirping and buzzing of insects in the
grass brought on a nap that caught me unaware. It must have been
mid-day when I awoke with a little start, to sit up and rub my eyes,
wondering for an instant where I was. Unloading my gun, I waded out
after the decoys and strung my dead birds on a thong of leather. Then,
yielding to a habit of those days, I climbed to the top of a sand hill,
for a look at the beach. Next moment I nearly shouted aloud in the
excitement of what I saw.
Close inshore, not far beyond the outer line of breaking seas, a
two-masted schooner was rounding into the wind. She was painted white
and her sails shivered crisply in the light air. One needed small
knowledge of ships to appreciate the beauty of the little vessel: the
high sharp bows, the graceful sweep of sheer, the slender masts, the
taut lines of shroud and stay. The sight of a ship was rare along our
stretch of coast. At long intervals we saw a trail of smoke far out to
sea,--the steamer trading between San Francisco and the west coast of
Mexico,--but this was the first time within my memory that a vessel of
any kind had passed so close to shore. And she was not merely passing,
for I saw now that her crew was sliding a long double-ended boat over
the rail. Three men sprang into the whaleboat: a pair of oarsmen who
seated themselves and began to pull toward shore, and a man in blue,
who stood in the stern, holding a steering-sweep with one hand and
waving good-bye to a gigantic figure at the schooner's wheel. The
giant raised his hand in an answering wave; the schooner bore off, her
sails filled, and she headed out to sea, heeling gracefully to the
breeze.
There had been a storm in the north and the swell was high that day.
Even from my perch on the dune, the approaching boat was invisible each
time it swung down into the trough. It was just beyond the breakers
now, and as it rose on the crest of a wave I saw that the oarsmen had
ceased to pull and that the man with the steering-sweep had turned his
head and was watching the rearing seas astern. The ground swell, as I
have said, was very high, rolling shoreward a good ten feet from trough
to ridge, and I began to wonder how these three men would win the beach
through the turmoil of white water ahead of them. Rearing and tossing
as the water shoaled, three or four great waves passed under the boat
and crashed forward, racing toward the beach in walls of foam. Then,
clear above the thunder of the surf, I heard a vibrant shout--a command
in some strange foreign tongue. The men on the seats tugged with a
sudden desperate effort at their oars; the man astern, with a single
heave of his sweep, turned the boat straight in toward where I lay. He
was smoking a cigar, and I felt a thrill of admiration at the easy,
careless way he stood at his post. A tremendous comber, with patches
of foam beginning to appear along its crest, lifted the boat high in
air and swept it forward tilting on the brink of a foaming wall. The
wave tumbled and crashed and came rushing far up the beach.
The boat grounded with a gentle shock and the two oarsmen leaped
overboard to hold her against the strong backwash. They were brown
men, I saw: great brawny fellows more than six feet tall, with
handsome, good-natured faces and teeth that flashed when they smiled.
The steersman sprang out on the damp sand and gave an order, at which
his men dropped a pair of light rollers on the beach and began to drag
the boat up beyond highwater mark. Then he came strolling toward the
sand hill where I lay hidden in the grass.
He was dressed in blue serge--a double-breasted coat with brass
buttons--and a blue yachting-cap with a white crown. His age must have
been forty or forty-five, but he was straight as an Indian and carried
himself like a boy. His face, of a humorous and rather reckless cast,
was tanned almost to the shade of the brown sailors toiling with the
boat, and his black eyes were the most brilliant I have ever seen.
His eyes betrayed him. He tossed away the burned-down cigar, folded
his arms, and came walking slowly toward my hiding-place, gazing about
him with a half-smile on his lips, as if this lonely beach recalled a
train of pleasant memories. I was peering down over a clump of rank
salt grass when he glanced up and looked directly into my eyes.
"Uncle Harry!" I shouted as I came sliding and tumbling down the steep
face of the dune. His strong hands seized me and lifted me to my feet.
"You're Charlie, eh?" he said, when he had looked me up and down with a
smile that took me back to evenings by our fireside, ten years before.
"You've done well to remember me all this time! By Jove! I'd never
have known you in the world! Here, let's have another look. A chip of
the old block, I reckon--you're going to have your grandfather's mouth.
Well, I never liked a soft man. How are you all? Did you sight me
from the house? Been shooting, eh--let's see your birds."
[Illustration: "_You're Charlie, eh?_" _he said, when he had looked me
up and down with a smile that took me back to the evenings by our
fireside, ten years before._]
I led him across the dunes to where I had left my gun and string of
duck. At his request I undid the thong about their necks and laid them
out on the sand, while he took them up one by one, spreading a wing to
admire the changing colors of the speculum, or smoothing the feathers
of a glossy head. At last he sighed, as he cut the end of a fresh
cigar and looked up at me.
"Ah, Charlie, it takes me back," he remarked. "Many and many a time
I've shot over this pond! I had an old muzzle-loader, twice the weight
of that gun of yours. On a Friday night your grandfather used to say:
'Which one of you is going down to the marsh to-morrow to get me a mess
of duck?' and I always landed the job. Your daddy liked to work with
the cattle; he reckoned shooting was a chore, like splitting kindling,
or driving the milk-cows in from pasture. But it's time for _kaikai_,
and I'm keen to see Ben and Mary after all these years. And
Marion--she'll be seventeen now, eh? I'll bring my boys up to the
house for a bite; the swell was too high to drop anchor, so I told the
mate to stand off and on till I came out."
He turned toward the beach and called the sailors in his strong vibrant
voice: "_E Ivi! E Ofai e!_" A moment later I saw the two brown men
trotting across the dunes. Their feet were bare and they wore sailor
jackets and trousers of dungaree. Their round caps bore the schooner's
name, Tara, woven in silver thread upon the bands.
"Good lads," remarked my uncle, as they drew near. "Paumotu boys from
Rangiroa--they've been with me since the Tara was built. Shake hands
with them before we start." He spoke to the sailors in their own
tongue, telling them that I was his brother's son, and they smiled as
they gazed at me with the frank curiosity of savages. At a word from
Uncle Harry, one of them picked up my gun and birds, and I led the way
around the marsh to the Santa Brigida road.
We had not walked more than half a mile when we met my father, who had
sighted the schooner and was now riding down to the beach.
"Harry!" he exclaimed, his bearded face transformed by an expression I
had never seen; and in an instant he was off his horse and wringing my
uncle's hand. "It's like you to drop in this way, without an hour's
warning, but your welcome will be all the warmer for that! It's good
to see you, old fellow! You're looking well--your cannibal islands
must agree with you. What do you think of this uncle of yours, eh,
Charlie? He wouldn't for the world drop me a wire a day or two ahead,
or arrive by train or motor-car, like a civilized man. Nothing will do
but to come in a schooner and land like a pirate on the beach! But
come along to the house and bring your men; I can't offer them
missionary, if that's their usual diet, but we killed a steer
yesterday, and there's plenty of fresh beef."
"Well, Ben," said Uncle Harry, still clasping my father's hand, "ten
years haven't changed you, after all! I can't tell you how good it is
to be back on the Santa Brigida again! Your boy says that Mary and
Marion are well--come, I want to see them; let's be getting along.
I'll bring my sailors, if I may. No need to ask how you are--rugged as
an old grizzly, eh?"
At sight of Uncle Harry my mother forgot her cares, and only the joy of
preparing dinner for him persuaded my sister Marion to leave his side.
We dined at midday in the old-fashioned manner, and that afternoon we
lingered long at table, until a whispering buzz of talk from the
courtyard told us that the news had spread--that my grandfather's old
retainers were assembling to greet the boy they had known so many years
before. Motioning us to keep our places, Uncle Harry rose from his
chair with a smile and walked out through the door to the sunny court
beyond.
I heard a chorus of exclamations in Spanish: "Don Enrique! Patroncito!
Ay, Dios Mio!" and the voice of old Juana, the white-haired woman who
had nursed him as a child, sobbing aloud as she murmured over and over:
"My child, my child--you have not forgotten old Juana, no?" He had an
almost uncanny faculty for winning people's love.
We sat late that evening about the fire of oak logs in the living-room.
Even to-day the scent of wood smoke brings back the picture of that
long, dim-lit room, with its ceiling, so lofty that parts of it were
lost in shadow, crossed by great roughhewn beams, blackened by half a
century of smoke. The heads of antelope and deer and bighorn looked
down from the walls, and close to the chimney my grandfather's
silver-mounted spurs and old Sharp's rifle hung from a peg. The floor
was covered with the skins of animals that he had shot: wildcat and
mountain lion; grizzlies from San Gorgonio and Temescal; a moth-eaten
buffalo-robe from the days when he had crossed the plains.
At last we rose to bid my mother and Marion good-night. Eager to hear
what my uncle would have to say, I seated myself inconspicuously in a
high-backed chair, and at that moment my father turned and noticed me.
"Bedtime, Charlie," he said in his firm, kindly way. But Uncle Harry
was of a different mind.
"Let him sit up for once," he put in, with a twinkle in his dark eyes;
"I want to have a yarn with you, and I want Charlie to hear what I have
to say. Don't complain if I keep you up the best part of the night,
for this is my only chance. I am going to tell you a story, which will
explain why I must leave to-morrow, and why I ask you to let Charlie go
with me when I sail."
"Sailing to-morrow!" exclaimed my father, sitting up suddenly in his
chair; "and you want to take Charlie away! That's a deuce of a thing
to tell me the first time I've seen you for ten years! Why in the
world must you rush away so fast?"
My uncle smiled a wry smile.
"It's hard to leave so soon," he said. "I wish I could spend a month
or two with you, wandering over the old place and having a bit of
sport. But I'm short of time. I've been in San Francisco, having a
motor installed in the Tara, and the people at the shipyard were slow.
I would have communicated with you, but I didn't want to make any rash
promises, and it began to look as if I wouldn't have time to put in
here at all. I'll be up next year for a real visit--on my word; but
to-morrow I must sail; I'm going to take Charlie with me if I have to
sit up all night persuading you."
Uncle Harry gave me one of his brilliant glances, tempered with a wink,
and I felt my heart beat with excitement at the prospect opening
suddenly before me. He rose to his feet, took a pair of long thin
cigars from his case, offered one to my father, and sank back into his
chair, cocking his heels high against the rough stone of the fireplace.
"Now," he went on, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, "if
you're not too sleepy, I'm going to tell you how I came to hear of the
pearls in Iriatai Lagoon."