_Morning._
P.S.--These sleeping cars are really wonderful. Such a thing happened
last night! But it shows how comfortable the beds are, and how soundly
people can sleep. At the station where we stopped after dinner, two
couples got in, an uncle and nephew, married to an aunt and niece; only
the uncle's wife was the niece, and the nephew's the aunt, a plain
elderly person with a fierce commanding glance and a mole on her upper
lip, while he was a nice-looking boy with droopy grey eyes. The train
was very crowded, and they could only get two single berths--lower
ones, but they are quite wide enough for two people to sleep in at a
pinch. It appears the husbands went off to smoke while the wives
undressed and got into bed, and when they returned the coloured
conductor showed them to their places, naturally thinking, as they were
the same name, the old ones were a pair and the young ones another. And
fancy, Mamma, they never found out till the morning, when the whole car
was awakened by the old lady's yells! And the old gentleman flew out
like Hopkins and wanted to nearly murder the conductor. But it was not
the least his fault, was it? And the nephew, such a nice, generous
fellow, gave the poor nigger twenty-five dollars to make up for being
roughly handled. The niece still slept on through all this noise, and
Tom, who was passing at the time the old gentleman lifted the curtains
to climb in there, said she looked the sweetest thing possible with her
long eyelashes on her cheek.
The four had the next table to us at lunch, and they seemed all at
sixes and sevens with one another, the elderly lady glaring at her
young husband, and the uncle frowning at the niece, while the nephew
had just the look of Hurstbridge when Mademoiselle scolds him unjustly.
It was dreadful for them, wasn't it, Mamma? and not a soul to blame.
_Still in the train._
DEAREST MAMMA,--You can't think what interesting country we are going
through. We woke yesterday morning and peeped out about five to see the
most perfect desolation one could imagine,--much more grim than the
Egyptian desert: vast unending plains of uneven ground, with a rough
dried drab grass in splodges, and high scrub. Not a bird or animal in
all these hundreds of miles, only desolation; generally perfectly flat,
but here and there rising ground and rough hills. The Senator says it
is the end of the ranch country, but we have seen no sign of cattle or
any beast, and what could they eat? At long intervals we have passed a
few board shanties like card houses grouped together near the track;
just fancy living there, Mamma! Even with the nicest young man in the
world it would be a trial, wouldn't it? And those Mormons crossed it
all in waggons! And we are finding it quite long in a train! It is
still going on, and now the surface is a little different; low hills
are sticking up just like elephants' backs, and the same colour; no
ranches are here or any living thing. We get into our drawing-room, all
of us, and the Senator tells us stories of his young days, too
exciting, they must have been, when he came through here before all the
railway was built. No wonder he is so splendid a character now, having
had to be so strong and fearless all his life. Every word he says is
interesting, and perfectly vivid and true; and his views on every
subject that is discussed are common-sense and exact. He has no
prejudices, and is not touchy. He can see his own nation's faults as
well as ours, and his first thought is to appreciate the good
qualities.
He says there is a very grave danger to the country in the liberty of
the press, which has a most debasing influence by printing all the
sensational news, and encouraging the interest in these things in the
youthful mind. It must bring a paltry taint into the glorious freedom
of the true American spirit, but that will right itself. He says: "They
are too darned sane to suffer a scourge when once they begin to see
its fruits." And while the rest were in the observation car after tea
he talked to me of happiness. Happiness, he said, was the main and
chief object in life, and yet nine-tenths of the people of the world
throw it away for such imitation pleasure; and you can't often catch it
again once you have lost it.
I asked him what the greatest was, and he said perfect happiness was to
be close to the woman you loved. If that was impossible there were
several substitutes of a secondary sort--your children, ambition,
success, and even rest. Then his eyes grew all misty and sad, and he
looked out on the desert, and at that moment we were passing a group of
a few shanties close to the rails. They were tumbled down and deserted,
and nearby lay the skeleton of a horse. "It was in just such a place as
that, only a good bit farther west, I first saw my Hearts-ease," he
said. "The boys called her 'Hearts-ease' because she was the sweetest
English flower, drifted out to the mines with the people who had
adopted her." He paused, and I slipped my hand into his, he looked so
sad, and then he told me all the story, Mamma, and it has touched me
so, I tell it to you.
He had gone to this small rough camp, about thirty miles short of the
Great Eagles, with only ten cents in his pocket, from the ranch where
he had been a cowboy. He had ridden for days, and there his horse had
died. He crept up half dead, carrying his saddle bags, and these
people, "human devils," he called them, who owned Hearts-ease, let him
come in and lie in a shed. They kept a sort of a gambling den, all of
the most primitive, and the worst rogues of the world congregated there
in the evenings.
Hearts-ease was about sixteen, and they looked upon her as a promising
decoy-duck, but she was "just the purest flower of the prairies," he
said, and so they beat and starved her in consequence, for not falling
in with their views.
That night when he lay in the straw, she crept out of some corner where
she slept, and warned him not to remain, if he had gold in the bags, or
they would certainly murder him before morning; and she gave him some
water, and half her wretched supper, because he had been too tired to
eat when he arrived. Then he told her he was only a poor cowboy, hoping
to get on to the Great Eagles Camp and make his fortune; and they
stayed there talking till dawn, and she bathed his poor feet, all
bleeding from his long tramp, and must have been too sweet and
adorable, Mamma. And when the morning came and her adopted parents
found he was still there and had only ten cents to pay with, they tried
to make him leave, and beat Hearts-ease before his eyes, which made him
so mad he got out his gun (that means revolver) and would have shot the
man, only Hearts-ease clung to him, and begged him not to. Then they
called in some more brutes, who had been drinking and gambling all
night in the bar, and overpowered him, and threw him out, and the girl,
too, and said he might take her to hell with him, they would shelter
her no more. And one of the brutes said he would fight him for her, and
they made a ring and the brute tried to get his pistol off first; but
it hit another man, and before he could shoot again, the Senator fired
and wounded him in the side; and as he fell, and the others, angry at
his hitting one of them, all began to quarrel together, the Senator and
the girl slipped away, and ran and hid in the scrub. If you could have
heard him telling all this, Mamma, in the dying light, his strong face
and quiet voice so impressive! I shall never forget it. Well, the girl
had brought some bread in a handkerchief, which he had not eaten, and
they shared that together, and when it was dark they slept under the
stars; and "by then I'd just grown to love her," he said, and "we were
quite content to die together if we couldn't push on to the big camp;
but we meant to make an almighty try."
They did get there, finally, and the sheriff married them, and here his
voice broke a little and was so low I could hardly hear him. There were
no two people ever so happy, he said. He built a little shack of boards
not twelve feet long, "way up on the mountain," and she kept it like a
new pin, and was dainty and sweet and loving, and when he came in from
the mines she would run to meet him "as gentle as a fawn," and he never
wanted to go to the saloons or drink like the other men, "though I was
always pretty handy with my gun," he said, "and had been through the
whole ugly show."
And presently he began to make a little money and would contrive to
give her small things for the house; it gave her more pleasure than
anything in the world to make it pretty, so that the little shed was
the admiration of all the other miners' wives. And once he was able to
buy some flower seeds, and she grew a pansy in a pot because there is
no green thing in that barren land, and she tended it and watched it as
it came through the earth, and no one was so joyous as she. "It hurts
me to look at pansies even now," he said; and I was glad, Mamma, it was
getting dark, because I felt the tears coming in my eyes. They were
perfectly happy like this for about three years, and then Lola was born
and they were happier still; but before that she used to take him up on
the mountains, above their shack, to look down at the camps, and watch
the stars, and she always used to see things in the future--how they
would be very rich, and he would be a great man. "And this is where
blood tells," he said. "She was nothing but the love-child of some
young English lord, drifted out to our land with her servant-girl
mother. And she'd spent all her life in gambling hells among rogues,
but her soul was the daintiest lady angel that ever walked this earth,
though she could hardly read or write, and all the stars were her
friends, and even a rattlesnake wouldn't have wounded her." Mustn't she
have been a darling, Mamma? She had hair like gold, and little ears,
pink as sea shells, and big blue eyes and a flower for a mouth. No
wonder he loved her so. He said her baby was even more pleasure to her
than the pansy had been, and they both were "just kind of foolish over
it." Well, when Lola was about three months old a gang of desperadoes
came to the camp, and among them the man the Senator had wounded for
his wife. Before the Senator came in from the mine Hearts-ease heard
the other miners' wives talking of this, and how this man had boasted
he would kill him. She knew her husband was unarmed, having left his
gun behind him that day because his second one was broken, and he would
not leave her with none in the shack; quite unsuspiciously he returned
with his comrades, and went into a bar to have a drink on his way back,
as he often did to hear the news of the day. And when Hearts-ease could
not find him on the road, she ran down there, carrying the gun and the
baby, to warn him and give him his weapon, and got into the saloon just
as the desperado and his following entered by another door.
The enemy called out to the Senator that he meant to "do for him this
time," and as Hearts-ease rushed up to her husband with no fear for
herself, holding out the gun, the brute fired and shot her through the
heart, and she fell forward with Lola, dead in the Senator's arms. "And
then the heavens turned to blood," he said, "and I took the gun out of
her dead clasp and killed him like a dog." But by this time, Mamma, I
really was crying so I could hardly hear what he said. No wonder his
eyes have a sad look sometimes, or his hair is gray.
We neither of us spoke for a while. I could only press his strong kind
hand. Then he recovered his voice, and went on as if dreaming: "It all
came true what she prophesied. I am rich beyond her uttermost
fancyings, and I've sampled pretty well most all the world, but I've
always tried to do the things she would have liked me to do. I guess
you've wondered at my dandy clothes, and shiny finger nails. Well, it's
just to please her--if she's looking on." Wasn't he a man worth loving,
Mamma! And of course she did not mind dying for him, and how happy and
glad she must be now, if she is "looking on." Somehow the whole story
has made me so long for Harry, that I have been perfectly miserable all
the evening, and if you think you could cable to him and tell him to
come back I think perhaps you might, and I will say I am sorry.
Your affectionate daughter,