THE QUESTION NONE COULD ANSWER.
How the Widow's heart had been beating all this time! How she waited,
and waited, and listened, and how often she sent Captain Tommy to the
door to tell her, if possible, how her baby fared among the half-wild
men of the camp.
How glad she was when she saw Sandy enter, all flurry and delight, as if
he had been the central figure in some great triumph. Then a bit of the
old sadness and cast of care swept over her face, and she nestled down
in the pillow and put up her two hands to hide a moment from the light.
The other two were too busy with the little Half-a-pint to notice her
trouble then. They laid it down in a cradle that had been made for
rocking and washing gold, and good little Bunker Hill sat by it, and
crossed her legs and took up her work, and went on sewing and singing to
herself, and swinging her leg that hung over, and rocking the cradle
with her foot in the old fashioned way when babies were born in the
leaves of the woods of the Wabash, and mothers sat singing by the
camp-fires, knitting and rocking their babies in their sugar-troughs.
Down in the Howling Wilderness I am bound to say the carousing began
early, and with a vigor that promised more headaches than the camp had
known since the Widow first set foot in the Forks.
Little Half-a-pint was toasted and talked of in every corner of the
house. Was it a girl or was it a boy? Why had they not asked so simple
and so civil a question? They called for Limber Tim--they would appeal
to him. But Limber Tim was not to be found in all the manifold depths of
the Howling Wilderness. He had had his carouse, and was now playing
sober Indian. In fact, he was hanging very close about the little
rocking cradle up in the front room of the Widow's cabin. Never was the
cradle allowed to rest, but rock, rock, till the Widow and Sandy too
were both made very sensible, sleeping or waking, that little
Half-a-pint, small as it was, was filling up the biggest half of the
house.
Nearly midnight it was when Limber Tim, leaning over the cradle and
looking, or pretending to look, at the baby, said to Bunker Hill, who
bent down over it on the other side, "Pretty, ain't it?"
"Guess it is. Looks just like its father for the world." And little
hump-backed Bunker Hill began to make faces, and to shake her head and
nod it up and down, and coo and crow to little Half-a-pint as if it was
really able to hear, and understand, and answer all she said to it.
Down at the saloon all this time the spirits flowed like water. The
cinnamon-haired fellow had fallen upon a harvest, and was making the
most of it. He had laid off his coat, run his two hands up through his
hair till it stood up like forked flames, and was thumping the glasses
as if in feats of legerdemain. How he did score with the charcoal on the
hewn logs behind. He marked and scored that night till the wall behind
him looked as if it might be the Iliad written in Greek, or all the
characters on the obelisk of Saint Peter's.
Yet with all this happiness on the hill, and this merry-making under the
hill, in the heart of the Sierras, in commemoration and celebration of
the beginning of a new race in a new land, there was one man back in the
corner of the saloon who looked on with something of a sneer on his
hard, hatchet face, and who refused to take any part. Now and then this
man would lift up his left hand, hold out his fingers and count, one,
two, three, four, five, to himself with his other hand, and then shake
his head.
The men began to look at him and wonder what he meant. Then this man
would count again--one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Then, when
the men would waddle by in their great gum-boots and look back at him
over their beards, he would look them square in the face and wink, and
screw and shrug his shoulders.
This man stopped there in the middle of the spree, and pursing his brow,
and holding up his fingers once more, and looking as profound as if
wrestling with a problem in Euclid, said to himself: "Hosses is ten,
cows is six, cats is three; but human bein's? Blowed if I know." And he
shook his head.
At last this hard, hatchet-faced looking man, standing back alone in the
corner, seemed to have got it all counted up to his own satisfaction. He
counted, however, again; then he said, as if to himself, "Seven months
at the very outside," and slapped his hands together with great glee,
and sucked his thin brown lips as if he had just tasted something very
delicious.
Then this hatchet-faced fellow, still rubbing his hands and still
twirling his lip, and all the time grinning with a grin that was sweet
and devilish, turned to the first man at his side, and whispered in his
ear.
This man started and spun around when the hard-faced man had finished as
if he had been a top, and the hatchet-faced fellow had struck him with a
whip.
The man spun about, in fact, till the hard-faced fellow caught hold of
his eye with his own and held him there till he could catch his breath.
Then the man, after catching his breath, and catching it again, said
slowly, but most emphatically:
"Ompossible!"
The hatchet-faced man simply pecked in the face of the other. He did not
say any thing more to him, but he pecked at him again, and he pecked
emphatically, too, and in a way that would not admit of any two
opinions; as if the man were a grain of corn, and he had half a mind to
pick him up and swallow him down for daring to hint that it was
impossible.
Then the man went off suddenly to one side, and he too fell to counting
on his fingers, and to taking a whole knot of men into his confidence.
Then the hatchet-faced fellow went up to another man and whispered in
his ear, with his smirk and his sweet devilish smile, and he soon set
him to spinning round like a top, and to lifting up his fingers and
counting one, two, three, four, five.
Then all around the saloon men began to get sober and to hold up their
hands and to count their fingers.
At last the little fat red-faced Judge was heard to say--
"They was married in the Fall."
"About--about--about--eh, about what month, do you remember, eh?"
squeaked out the hatchet-faced interrogation point through the nose, as
he planted himself before the little Judge.
"About the last cleaning up," said the Judge cheerfully.
"That was about--about--" and the hatchet-faced man with the nasal twang
and sharp nose began again to count on his fingers--"about four, five,
six, seven months ago?"
"Yes, yes," said the good-natured, unsuspicious, important little Judge,
"about six, seven months ago, I reckon." And then he, smiling
innocently, fell in between two great bearded giants, as a sort of
ham-sandwich filling, to take a drink at the bar.
"Ompossible!" said the first top to the hatchet-face.
"Ask him."
The hatchet-face and sharp-nose looked towards the little fat Judge
wedged in between the giants. The top spun up to the little Judge,
wedged his head in between the giants' shoulders, and asked a question.
The Judge shook his head, and then wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand, said half sadly, "No, I am not. No, I am sorry to say, I am not.
That is a happiness still in store. No, I am not a family man. Never was
married in my life; but whatever may transpire in this glorious climate
of Californy--"
The top had its answer, and spun back to its place without waiting for
the last of the speech.
The two men talked together again. Then they appealed to an old man who
sat mute and sullen back on the bench by the bull-dog.
"No, he didn't know about such things; didn't care a cuss anyhow." And
the two men went away as if a flea or two had left the dog and hopped
into their ears. They went to another man. "Don't see the point, blowed
ef I do. Six months, seven months, eight months, ten months, all along
there, I 'spose. The great Washington, Caesar, Horace Greeley, all sich
big-bugs, it might take one, two, three years. That little cuss to-day
only a month or two, I reckon. It's all right, I reckon. It ain't my
funeral, any how. And what the devil you come botherin' of me for,
anyhow? Ef yer don't want to drink yerself, let a fellow alone what
does!" And he shook them off with a gesture of the hand and a jerk of
the head that meant a great deal more than he had said.
There were not so many fingers up now as before. The question evidently
had been settled in the minds of the men fully in favor of the little
Half-a-pint. Few understood these things at all, fewer still cared to go
into particulars at this time, and the question would keep till they had
more leisure and less whisky.
Finally, the hatchet-faced man went round and sat down opposite the man
who sat behind the little silver faro-box by the pine-table, and began
to whisper in his ear. The good-natured genius, half-gambler,
half-miner, who had played the little prank with the salmon and
gold-dust, had had a dull night of it, and most like even for that
reason was a little out of humor. At all events he did not answer at
once, but set down his little silver box, and, taking up his cards,
began to spin them one by one over the heads of the men, or through the
crowd as it opened, back at the old bull-dog that lay on the bunk on the
bags of gold under the blankets, and half whistling to himself as he did
so.
The hatchet-faced man, fearing the man had forgotten his presence and
his revelation, leaned over again and began to whisper and to count on
his fingers.
Then he looked sharp at the gambler and began again; "Hits my 'pinion
that it's that boy, Billie Piper."
"How many months did you say?" asked the gambler at last.
"Seven or eight at the furthest."
"And how many had it ought to be?"
"Twelve!" And the smile that was sweet and devilish played about the
thin blue lips below the sharp and meddlesome nose.
"And are you a family man?"
"No."
"And you say she's bilked us?"
"Yes."
"You're a darn'd infernal liar!" The gambler rose as he said this,
snatched up his silver box and dashed it into the teeth of Hatchet-face.
And he, coward as he was, put up his hands and held them to his mouth
while the blood ran down between his fingers.
"I don't keer, Judge, I don't keer, if I broke every tooth in his head.
I don't 'low no white-livered son of a gun to go about a-talking about a
woman like that."
Then the gambler, walking off, said to those around him in a lower tone,
"It don't take no twelve months nohow. Now there's the yaller cat;
'bout four litters in a year. Twelve months be blowed! That's an old
woman's story. Then that's in Missoury, anyhow, and what's the climate
of Missoury got to do with Californy, I'd like to know? No, gentlemen;
some apples gits ripe soon, and some don't git ripe till frost comes.
Them's things, gentlemen, as we don't know nothing about. Them's
mysteries, and none of our business, nohow. Show me the man," and here
he began to roar like a Numidian lion, and to tower up above the crowd,
while a face like a razor shot out through the door, looking back
frightened as it fled, "Show me the man as says it's not all right, and
I'll shake him out of his boots."
The gambler picked up his battered box, but he was evidently not in a
good humor. He wiped it on his coat-sleeve, and polished it up and down,
but was ill content. At last, looking out from under his great slouch
hat, he saw the top in the center of a little knot of men holding up his
hand and counting his fingers. He threw the box down on the table and
rushed into the knot of men.
"A bully set you are, ain't you? Gw'yne around a-counting up after a
sick woman. And what do you know, anyhow?" He took hold of the nervous
top, and again set it spinning. "That little woman, she come as we
come. God Almighty didn't set no mark and gauge on you, and you shan't
go 'round and count up after her. Do you hear? Now you git. You're
wanted. Hatchet-face wants yer. Do you hear?"
The man spun his top about till its face was to the door, and it went
out as a sort of handle to the hatchet, and was seen no more that night.
Yet for all this there had been a great ripple in the wave that had to
run even to the shore before it could disappear from the face of things
at the Forks.