THE FIRST WOMAN IN THE FORKS.
One day Limber Tim came up from the Howling Wilderness, all excitement:
all gyrations, and gimlets, and corkscrews. He twisted himself around a
sapling--this great, overgrown, six-foot boy without a beard--and
shouting down to his "pardner" in the mine, Old Sandy, who stood at the
bottom of the open claim, leaning on his pick, resting a moment, looking
into the bright bubbling water that burst laughing from the bank before
him, dreaming a bit in the freshness about him; and said, "Hallo! I say!
a widder's come to town. D'ye hear? A widder; one what's up and up, and
on the square."
Sandy only looked up, for he was getting old, and gray, and wrinkled.
Then he looked at the silver stream that ran from the bank and through
the rocks at his feet, and called to him in the pleasant, balmy sunset,
sweet with the smell of fir, and he did not disturb the water again with
his pick. It looked too pretty, laughed, and sparkled, and leapt, and
made him glad and yet sad.
A poet was this man Sandy, a painter, a sculptor, a mighty moralist; a
man who could not write his name.
He laid down his pick, for the sun was just pitching his last lances at
the snow-peaks away up yonder above the firs, above the clouds, and
night was coming down with steady steps to possess this chasm in the
earth.
Limber Tim untwisted himself from the sapling as Sandy came up from the
mine, twisting his great shaggy beard with his right hand, while he
carried his black slouch hat in his left, and the two sauntered on
toward their cabin together, while Sandy's great gum boots whetted
together as he walked.
The "Parson" was in a neighboring cabin when it was announced that the
first woman had come to the camp. The intelligence was received in a
profound silence.
There was a piece of looking-glass tacked up over the fire-place of this
cabin.
Old Baldy whistled a little air, and walked up to this glass, sidewise,
silently, and stood there smoothing down his beard.
"Ginger blue!" cried the Parson, at last, bounding up from his bench,
and throwing out his arms, as if throwing the words from the ends of
his fingers. "Ginger blue! hell-ter-flicker!" And here he danced around
the cabin in a terrible state of excitement, to the tune of a string of
iron-clad oaths that fell like chain-shot. They called him the Parson,
because it was said he could outswear any man in the camp, and that was
saying a great deal, wonderful as were his achievements in this line.
After the announcement, every one of the ten men there took a look at
the little triangular fragment of looking-glass that was tacked up over
the fire-place.
The arrival of Eve in Paradise was certainly an event; but she came too
early in the world's history to create much sensation.
Stop here, and fancy the arrival of the first woman on earth to-day--in
this day of committees, conventions, brass-band receptions, and woman's
rights!
You imagine a princess had come to camp, a good angel, with song and
harps, or, at the least, carpet-bags, and extended crinoline,
waterfalls, and false hair, a pack-train of Saratoga trunks, and all the
adjuncts of civilization. Not at all. She had secured a cabin, by some
accident, very near to that of the boy poet, and settled down there
quietly to go to work.
Yes, Limber Tim had "seed" her. She had ridden the bell mule of the
pack-train down the mountain and into town. He told how the hats went
up in the air from in and about the Howling Wilderness, and how the boys
had gone up in rows to the broken looking-glass in the new barber-shop,
and how some had even polished their bowie-knives on their boots, and
sat down and tried to see themselves in the shining blade, and adjust
their dress accordingly.
In a little time Sandy bent silently over the table in the cabin, and
with his sleeves rolled up high on his great hairy arms, and kneaded
away at the dough in the gold pan in silence, while Limber Tim wrestled
nervously with the frying-pan by the fire.
"Is she purty, Limber?"
"Purty, Sandy? She's purtier nur a spotted dog."
Sandy sighed, for he felt that there was little hope for him, and again
fell into a moody silence.
There was a run that night on the little Jew shop at the corner of the
Howling Wilderness. Before midnight the little kinky-headed Israelite
had not a shirt, collar, or handkerchief, or white fabric of any kind
whatever in the shop.
It might have been a bit of first-class and old-fashioned chivalry that
had lain dormant in these great hairy breasts, or it might have been
their strict regard for the appropriateness of names that made these
men at once call her the "Widder;" or it might have been some sudden
revelation, a sort of inspiration, given to the first man who saw her as
she rode down the mountain into camp, or the first man who spoke of her
as she rode blushing through their midst with her pretty face held
modestly down; but be all that as it may, certainly there was no design,
no delay, no hesitation about it from the first. And yet the appellation
was singularly appropriate, and perhaps suggested to this poor, lone
little woman, daring to cross the mountains, and to come down into this
great chasm of the earth, among utter strangers, the conduct of her
life.
The first woman came unheralded. Like all good things on earth, she came
quietly as a snowflake down in their midst, without ado or
demonstration.
Who she was or where she came from no one seemed to know. Perhaps the
propriety of questioning occurred to some of the men of the camp, but it
never found expression. I had rather say, however, that when they found
there was a real live woman in camp, a decent woman, who was willing to
work and take her place beside the men in the great battle--bear her
part in the common curse which demands that we shall toil to eat, they
quietly accepted the fact, as men do the fact of the baby's arrival,
without any question whatever.
This was not really the first woman to come into the camp of this
thousand of bearded men; and yet it was the first. There were now five
or six, maybe more, down at the Forks--some from Sydney, some from New
Orleans--waifs of the foam, painted children of passion.
I am not disposed to put all these women in the catalogue of saints.
They were very devils, some of them.
These women set man against man, and that Winter made many a crimson
place in the great snow banks in the streets. They started the first
graveyard at the Forks; and kept it recruited too, every holiday, and
almost every Sunday.
True, they did some good. I do not deny that. For example, I have in my
mind now the picture of one, Bunker Hill, holding the head of a brave
young fellow, shot through the temple, his long black hair in strings
and streaming with blood. She held him so till he died; and mourned and
would not be separated from him while a hope or a breath remained--the
blood on her hands, on her face, all over her costly silks and lace, and
on the floor.
Then she had him buried elegantly as possible; sent for a preacher away
over to Yreka to say the funeral service; put evergreens about his
grave, and refused to be comforted.
All this was very beautiful--a touch of tenderness in it all; but it was
spoiled by the reflection that she had allured and almost forced the
fellow into the fight, in hopes of revenging herself on the man whom she
hated, and by whose hand he had to fall.
There was another woman there who was very benevolent--in fact, they all
were liberal with their money, and were the first and freest to bestow
upon the needy. This woman was a Mexican--from Durango, I think; and her
name was Dolores. Gentle in her manner, patient, sad; not often in the
difficulties that distinguished the others; but generally alone, and by
far the best liked of all these poor Magdalens. This good nature of hers
made her most accessible, and so she was most sought for deeds of
charity. Toward Spring it was said she was ill; but no one seemed to
know, or maybe no one cared.
If you will stop here to consider, it will occur to you that it is a
man's disposition to avoid a sick woman; but a woman's disposition to
seek out a sick man and nurse him back to health. This being true, here
is a text for the Sorosis.
A bank had caved on a man--only a prospecter, a German, who lived away
in a little cabin on the hill-side--and crushed him frightfully. The man
was penniless and alone, and help had to come from the camp.
Some one went to Dolores. She was in her room or cabin, out a little way
from any one, alone and ill, sitting up in bed, looking "wild enough,"
as the man afterwards stated. He told her what had happened. She leaned
her head on her hand a moment, and then lifted it, looked up, and drew a
costly ring from her finger, the only one on her pale, thin hand, and
gave it to the man, who hurried away to get other aid elsewhere.
Now there was nothing very odd or unusual in a woman giving a ring. That
was often done. In fact, there was scarcely any coin on the Creek. In
cases of this kind a man generally gave the biggest nugget or specimen
he had in his pocket, a ring if he could not do better, sometimes a
six-shooter, and so on, and let them make the best of it, but always
something, if that something was possible. Let this be said and
remembered of these brave old men of the mountains.
A few days after this, it came out that Dolores was dead. Then it was
whispered that she had starved to death. This last was said with a sort
of a shudder. It came out with a struggle between the teeth, as if the
men were afraid to say it.
On investigation, it was found that the poor woman had been ill some
time, had lost her bloom and freshness; and what becomes of a woman of
this kind, who has no money, when she has lost her bloom and strength?
never had much money, always gave it away to the needy as fast as she
got it, and so had nothing to fight the world with when she fell ill.
Then the man with the rent, the lord of the log cabin--a cross between a
Shylock-Jew and a flint-faced Yankee--took her rings and jewels, one by
one. The baker grew exacting, and finally the butcher refused to bring
her meat. And that was all there was of it. That was the end.
That butcher never succeeded there after that. Some one wrote "Small
Pox" over his shop every night for a month, and it was shunned like a
pest-house. But all that did not bring poor Dolores back to life. The
ring was an antique gold, with a costly stone, and a Spanish name, which
showed her to have been of good family. A wedding ring.
But this woman, however, was an exception, and at best, when in health,
save her generous and sympathetic nature, was probably no angel.
One of these meddlesome men, a hungry, lean, unsatisfied fellow; a man
with a nose sharp and inquisitive enough to open a cast-iron cannon
ball, said one night to a knot of men at the Howling Wilderness saloon:
"Why widder? why call her the widder? who knows that she was ever
married at all?"
A man silently and slowly arose at this, and firmly doubled up his fist.
He stood there towering above that fellow, and looking down upon that
sharp inquisitive nose as if he wanted to drive it back into the middle
of his head.
"But maybe she's a maid," answered the terrified nose in haste and fear.
The other sat down, slowly and silently, as he had risen, and perfectly
satisfied that no insult had been intended. This was Sandy.
The Judge was there, and as the conversation had fallen through by this
man's remark, he felt called upon to resume it in a friendly sort of a
way, and said:
"No, no, she's not a maid, I reckon, not an old maid." He scratched his
bald head above his ear and went on, for the big man at his side began
to double up his knuckles. "I should say she's a widder. You see, the
maids never gits this far. They seem to spile first."
The Judge spoke as if talking of a sort of pickled oyster or smoked
ham.