AN ANNOUNCEMENT.
One day a miner laid his two fingers cross-wise, and twisting his head
to one side as he spirted a stream of tobacco juice across the saloon,
said: "Sandy is a infernal fool." The men winked, and he went on. "He
wants to marry that ere Widow. Wal, now, that ere Widow is in love with
that ere boy. Nobody to blame. You see if the Widow loves the boy that's
the Widow's bizness, not mine; only Sandy mustn't be a fool.
Besides,"--and here the man's voice sank low, and he looked around as if
he feared a Danite might be standing at his elbow--"besides, its my
private opinion that that ere Widow is _the_ Nancy Williams."
It was late in the Fall, and it certainly must have been a cold, frosty
morning, for Sandy's teeth chattered together as if he had an ague, when
he told the Judge.
In fact, he stood around the Howling Wilderness more than half a day,
but he could not, or at least would not drink, though he did very many
foolish things, and seemed ill at ease and troubled in a way that was
new to him.
At last he got the Judge to one side. He took him by the collar with
both hands, he backed him up in a corner, and, as he did so, his teeth
chattered and ground together as if he stood half-naked on the
everlasting snows that surrounded them. He pushed his face down into the
red apple-like face of the magistrate, and began as if he was about to
reveal the most terrible crime in the annals of the world. All the time
he was holding on to the Judge with both hands, as if he feared he might
not listen to his proposal, but tear away and attempt to escape.
At last Sandy drew a sharp, short breath, and blurted out what he had to
say, as if it was tearing out his lungs.
"Good, good!"
The Judge drew a long breath. He swelled out to nearly twice his usual
importance. You could have seen him grow.
It was now the Judge's turn to lay hold of Sandy. For now, as the great
strong man had accomplished his fearful task, told his secret, and done
all that was necessary to do, he wanted to get away, to go home, go
anywhere and collect his thoughts, and to rest.
The Judge held him there, told him the great advantages that would come
of it, the high responsibility that he was about to put his shoulder to,
and talked to him, in fact, till he grew white and stiff as a sign-post.
Yet all that Sandy could remember, for almost all that he said, was
something about "the glorious climate of Californy."
Never rode a king into his capital with such majesty as did the Judge
the next day enter the Forks. He was swelling, bursting with the
importance of his secret. But now he had Sandy's permission to tell the
boys, and he went straight to the Howling Wilderness for that purpose.
His face glowed like the fire as he stood there rubbing his hands above
the great mounting blaze, and bowing right and left in a patronizing
sort of a way to the miners who had sauntered into the saloon.
At last the little red-faced man turned his back to the fire, stuck his
two hands back behind his coat-tails, which he kept lifting up and down
and fanning carelessly, as if in deep thought--stood almost tip-toe,
stuck out his round little belly, and seemed about to burst with his
secret.
"O this wonderful Californy climate!" He puffed a little as he said
this, and fanned his coat-tails a little bit higher, perked out his
belly a little bit further, and stood there as if he expected some one
to speak. But as the miners seemed to think they had heard something
like this before, or, at least, that the remark was not wholly new, none
of them felt called upon to respond.
"Well"--the little man tilted up on his toes as he said this, and took
in a long breath--"hit comes off about the next snow fall."
He had said these words one at a time, and by inches as it were, slowly,
deliberately, as if he knew perfectly well that he had something to say,
and that the men were bound to listen.
This time they all looked up, and half of them spoke. And oh, didn't he
torture them! Not that he pretended to keep his secret of half a
day--not at all! On the contrary, he kept talking on, and tip-toeing,
and fanning his coat-tails, and pushing out his belly, and puffing out
his cheeks, just as careless and indifferent as if all the world knew
just what he was going to say, and was perfectly familiar with the
subject. "Yes, gentlemen," puffed the little man, "on or about the next
snow-fall the Widow, as a widow, ceases to exist. That lovely flower, my
friends, is to be transplanted from its present bed to--to--into--the--O
this wonderful climate of Californy!"
The Howling Wilderness was as silent as the
Catacombs of Rome for nearly a minute.
Then Sandy had not been deterred either by the Widow's strange intimacy
with the eccentric little Poet, or by the suspicion of the camp that
this woman was the last of the doomed family.
The first thing that was heard was something like a red-hot cannon-shot.
The cinnamon-headed man behind the bar dodged down behind his barricade
of sand-bags till only his bristling red hair and a six-shooter were
visible. The decanters tilted together as if there had been an
earthquake.
It was a Missourian swearing.
Somebody back in the corner said "Jer-u-sa-lem!"--said it in joints and
pieces, and then came forward and kicked the fire, and stood up by the
side of the red little man, and looked down at him as if he would like
to eat him for a piece of raw beef.
A fair boy, the dreamer, the poet, went back to a bunk against the
further wall, where the bar-keeper's bull-dog lay sleeping in his
blankets, and put his arms about his neck, and put his face down and
remained there a long time. Perhaps he wept. Was he weeping for joy or
for sorrow?
There was a great big grizzly head moved out of the crowd and up to the
bar. The head rolled on the shoulders from side to side, as if it was
not very firmly fixed there, and did not particularly care at this
particular time whether it remained there or not. A big fist fell like a
stone on the bar. The glasses jumped as if frightened half to death;
they ran up against each other, and clinked and huddled together there,
and fairly screamed and split their sides in their terror. A big mouth
opened behind an awful barricade of beard, again the big fist fell down,
again the glasses screamed and clinked with terror, and the head rolled
sidewise again, and the big mouth opened again, and the big voice said:
"By the bald-headed Elijah!" and that was all.
Then there was another calm, and you might have heard the little brown
wood-mice nibbling at the old boots, and leather belts, and tin cans
stowed away among the other rubbish up in the loft of the Howling
Wilderness.
Then the fist came down again, and the big mouth opened, and the big
mouth said, slow and loud, and long and savage, like the growl of a
grizzly:
"Swaller my grandmother's boots!" Then the man fell back and melted into
the crowd; and whatever romance there was in his life, whatever
sentiment he may have had, whatever poetry there was pent up in the
heart of this great Titan, it found no other expression than this.
The genteel gambler, who sat behind a table with its green cloth and
silver faro-box, forgot to throw his card, but held his arm poised in
the air till any man could have seen the Jack of Clubs, though a
thousand dollars' worth of gold-dust depended on the turn.
Yet all this soon had an end, of course, and there was a confusion of
tongues, and a noise that settled gradually over against the bar. Even
then, it was afterwards remarked, though the men really interested did
not know it at the time, that the cinnamon-headed dealer of drinks put
cayenne pepper in a gin cocktail and Scheidam schnapps in a Tom and
Jerry.
Limber Tim was there in their midst, but was a sad and a silent man.
Perhaps he had been told all about it before, and perhaps not. Tim was
not a talker, but a thinker. This to him meant the loss of his partner,
the man he loved--a divorce.
Poor Limber! he only backed up against the wall, screwed his back there,
twisted one leg in behind the other, stuck his hands in behind him, and
so stood there till he saw a man looking at him. Then he flopped over
with his face to the wall, dug up his great pencil from his great
pocket, and fell to writing on the wall, and trying to hide his face
from his fellows.
"Rather sudden, ain't it, Judge?"
"Well, not so sudden--not so sudden, considerin' this--this--this
glorious climate of Californy."
After awhile, when the monte game had asserted itself again, and things
were going on in the saloon just about as they were before the Judge
made this announcement, a tall and inquisitive man with a hatchet face
and a hump in his shoulder, and a twist in his neck, which made him look
like an interrogation point, rose up, and reaching his neck out toward
the bar, said in a sharp whisper:
"I'll bet a forty dollar hoss she's the real Nancy Williams."
The red-headed bar-keeper bristled up like a porcupine, and then put out
his broad hand as if it was an extinguisher.