A WEDDING IN THE SIERRAS.
The wedding-day came. The camp had been invited to a man. There was but
one place in the camp that could hold a tithe of its people, and that
was the Howling Wilderness. The plan had been to have the wedding under
the pines on the hill; but the wind came pitching down the mountain,
with frost and snow in his beard, that morning, and drove them to the
shelter.
What a place was that Howling Wilderness! It was battle-field,
prize-ring, dead-house, gambling-hell, court-house, chapel, every thing
by turns.
There they stood, side by side and hand in hand, before the crackling
fire, before the little Judge. The house was hot. It was crowded thick
as the men could stand. Tighter than sardines in a tin box, the men
stood there bare-headed with hardly room to breathe. The fat little
magistrate was terribly embarrassed. He had sent all the way across the
mountains by the last pack-train, by the last express, by the last man
who had dared the snows, but no pack-train, no express, nothing had
returned with the coveted, the so-much-needed marriage ceremony and
service, which he had resolved to read to the people, interspersed with
such remarks and moral observations as the case might require. Alas! the
form of the ceremony had not arrived. He had nothing of the kind to
guide him. He had never officiated in this way before. He had never
studied up in this branch.
Why should he have studied up in this line, when there was but one woman
in all his little world?
As the form had not arrived, he had nothing in the world but his moral
observations to use on this imposing occasion, and he was embarrassed as
a man had never been embarrassed before.
He stood there trying hard to begin. He could hear the men breathe. The
pretty little woman was troubled too. Her face was all the time held
down, her eyes drooped, and she did not look up--did not look right or
left or anywhere, but seemed to surrender herself to fate, to give
herself away. Her soul seemed elsewhere, as if she sat on a high bank
above all this, and was not of it or in it at all.
"Do you solemnly swear?"
The Judge had jerked himself together with an effort that made his
joints fairly rattle. He hoisted his right hand in the air as he said
this, and, having once broken ground, he went on--"Do you solemnly swear
to love, and honor, and obey?"
Poor Limber Tim, who had just room enough behind the Judge to turn over,
here became embarrassed through sympathy for the little red-faced
magistrate, and of course flopped over, and began to write his name and
the date, and make pictures on the wall, with a nervous rapidity
proportionate to his embarrassment.
"Do you solemnly swear?"
It was very painful. The little man took down his lifted flagstaff to
wipe his little bald head, and he could not get it up again, but stood
there still and helpless.
You could hear the men breathe deeper than before as they leaned and
listened with all their might to hear. They heard the water outside
gurgling on down over the great boulders, over their dams, and on
through the canon. They heard the little brown wood-mice nibble and
nibble at the bits of bacon-rind and old leather boots up in the loft
above their heads, but that was all. At last the Judge revived, and
began again in a voice that was full of desperation:
"Do you solemnly swear to love, and protect, and honor, and obey, till
death do you part; and--"
Here the voice fell down low, lower, and the Judge was again floundering
in the water. Then his head went under utterly. Then he rose, and "Now I
lay me down to sleep" rolled tremulously through the silent room from
the lips of the Judge. Then again the head was under water, then it rose
up again, and there was something like "Twinkle, twinkle, little star."
Then the voice died again, again the head was under water. Then it rose
again, and the head went up high in the air, and the voice was loud and
resolute, and the man rose on his tiptoes, and beginning with--"When in
the course of human events," he went on in a deep and splendid tone with
the Declaration of Independence, to the very teeth of tyrannical King
George, and then bringing his hand down emphatically on the gambling
table that stood to his right, said, loud, and clear, and resolute, and
authoritatively, as he tilted forward on his toes, "So help you God, and
I pronounce you man and wife."
The exhausted Judge sank back against the wall on top of Limber Tim, and
then, as if he all at once came to remember a part of the ceremony, and
after Sandy and the Widow and all were thinking that it was quite over,
he began in a low but clear voice--
"Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, and according to the laws
and the statutes of the State of California in such cases made and
provided, I pronounce you man and wife."
Then he rose up, came forward, and shaking the new bride by the hand,
then lifting it to his lips and kissing it gallantly, he said
carelessly, and as if nothing had happened, "You will pardon me for
pausing occasionally as I did. The room is so warm and the ceremony is
so long, that I really began to be exhausted."
He was going on to say something about the glorious climate of
California, but the men came forward, crowded around in this day of all
days, and quite squeezed the little man away from the "Widow," as she
was still called.
It was perfectly splendid! How they did shout, and laugh, and cheer, and
how careful they were to shake all the round oaths out of their speech
before addressing her. And how they did crowd around, as Sandy led her
away, every man of them, even to Washee-Washee, to wish her "God speed,"
and a long and a pleasant life in their midst, down there in the gorge,
in the heart of the great Sierras.
Only two circumstances in connection with this first family of the
Sierras worth mentioning, occurred for some months. The first of these
was the banishment of the boy-poet from the presence of the Widow. Sandy
led her at once to the "parsonage" with the green window blinds, as he
had solemnly promised the Parson to do. Into this house the boy was
never seen to enter. Sandy, it was whispered, had forbidden him the
house. The verdict of the Camp was: Served him right.
The other little event was, to all appearances, of still less
consequence. Yet it showed that there was a storm brewing, and it was a
straw which showed which way the wind was blowing. The boy was seen late
at night by some men who were passing, peering in at the Widow's window.
He ran away like one caught in a crime. But they said he "looked pale as
a ghost, and sickly, and sad, and lonesome."