“This ain't no woman's work--though I ain't sayin' you haven't got more
head for it than some men I know.”
Nevertheless, that night, after her father had gone to bed, Salomy Jane
sat by the open window of the sitting-room in an apparent attitude of
languid contemplation, but alert and intent of eye and ear. It was a
fine moonlit night. Two pines near the door, solitary pickets of the
serried ranks of distant forest, cast long shadows like paths to the
cottage, and sighed their spiced breath in the windows. For there was no
frivolity of vine or flower round Salomy Jane's bower. The clearing was
too recent, the life too practical for vanities like these. But the moon
added a vague elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines
of the sheds, gave shadows to the lidless windows, and touched with
merciful indirectness the hideous debris of refuse gravel and the gaunt
scars of burnt vegetation before the door. Even Salomy Jane was affected
by it, and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn with the breath
of the pines. Then she suddenly sat upright.
Her quick ear had caught a faint “click, click,” in the direction of the
wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her to determine
that it was the ring of a horse's shoe on flinty ground; her knowledge
of the locality told her it came from the spot where the trail passed
over an outcrop of flint scarcely a quarter of a mile from where she
sat, and within the clearing. It was no errant “stock,” for the foot was
shod with iron; it was a mounted trespasser by night, and boded no good
to a man like Clay.
She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise than shelter,
and passed out of the door. A sudden impulse made her seize her father's
shotgun from the corner where it stood,--not that she feared any danger
to herself, but that it was an excuse. She made directly for the wood,
keeping in the shadow of the pines as long as she could. At the fringe
she halted; whoever was there must pass her before reaching the house.
Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature. Everything was deadly
still--even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon there was a
rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns, and then a dismounted
man stepped into the moonlight. It was the horse-thief--the man she had
kissed!
For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect and
stirred her temperate blood. The news they had told her was NOT true;
he had been hung, and this was his ghost! He looked as white and
spirit-like in the moonlight, dressed in the same clothes, as when she
saw him last. He had evidently seen her approaching, and moved quickly
to meet her. But in his haste he stumbled slightly; she reflected
suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of relief came
over her. And it was no assassin of her father that had been prowling
around--only this unhappy fugitive. A momentary color came into her
cheek; her coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of
sauciness in her voice that she said:--
“I reckoned you were a ghost.”
“I mout have been,” he said, looking at her fixedly; “but I reckon I'd
have come back here all the same.”
“It's a little riskier comin' back alive,” she said, with a levity
that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness, half fear and half
expectation, was beginning to take the place of her relief of a moment
ago. “Then it was YOU who was prowlin' round and makin' tracks in the
far pasture?”
“Yes; I came straight here when I got away.”
She felt his eyes were burning her, but did not dare to raise her own.
“Why,” she began, hesitated, and ended vaguely. “HOW did you get here?”
“You helped me!”
“I?”
“Yes. That kiss you gave me put life into me--gave me strength to get
away. I swore to myself I'd come back and thank you, alive or dead.”
Every word he said she could have anticipated, so plain the situation
seemed to her now. And every word he said she knew was the truth. Yet
her cool common sense struggled against it.
“What's the use of your escaping, ef you're comin' back here to be
ketched again?” she said pertly.
He drew a little nearer to her, but seemed to her the more awkward as
she resumed her self-possession. His voice, too, was broken, as if by
exhaustion, as he said, catching his breath at intervals:--
“I'll tell you. You did more for me than you think. You made another man
o' me. I never had a man, woman, or child do to me what you did. I never
had a friend--only a pal like Red Pete, who picked me up 'on shares.'
I want to quit this yer--what I'm doin'. I want to begin by doin' the
square thing to you”--He stopped, breathed hard, and then said brokenly,
“My hoss is over thar, staked out. I want to give him to you. Judge
Boompointer will give you a thousand dollars for him. I ain't lyin';
it's God's truth! I saw it on the handbill agin a tree. Take him, and
I'll get away afoot. Take him. It's the only thing I can do for you, and
I know it don't half pay for what you did. Take it; your father can get
a reward for you, if you can't.”
Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither the man who
made the offer nor the girl to whom it was made was struck by anything
that seemed illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent with
justice or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane nevertheless
dissented, from another and weaker reason.
“I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but you're just
starvin'. I'll get suthin'.” She turned towards the house.
“Say you'll take the hoss first,” he said, grasping her hand. At the
touch she felt herself coloring and struggled, expecting perhaps another
kiss. But he dropped her hand. She turned again with a saucy gesture,
said, “Hol' on; I'll come right back,” and slipped away, the mere shadow
of a coy and flying nymph in the moonlight, until she reached the house.
Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long dust-coat
and hat of her father's to her burden. They would serve as a disguise
for him and hide that heroic figure, which she thought everybody must
now know as she did. Then she rejoined him breathlessly. But he put the
food and whiskey aside.
“Listen,” he said; “I've turned the hoss into your corral. You'll find
him there in the morning, and no one will know but that he got lost and
joined the other hosses.”
Then she burst out. “But you--YOU--what will become of you? You'll be
ketched!”
“I'll manage to get away,” he said in a low voice, “ef--ef”--
“Ef what?” she said tremblingly. “Ef you'll put the heart in me
again,--as you did!” he gasped.
She tried to laugh--to move away. She could do neither. Suddenly he
caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she returned again and
again. Then they stood embraced as they had embraced two days before,
but no longer the same. For the cool, lazy Salomy Jane had been
transformed into another woman--a passionate, clinging savage. Perhaps
something of her father's blood had surged within her at that supreme
moment. The man stood erect and determined.
“Wot's your name?” she whispered quickly. It was a woman's quickest way
of defining her feelings.
“Dart.”
“Yer first name?”
“Jack.”
“Let me go now, Jack. Lie low in the woods till to-morrow sunup. I'll
come again.”
He released her. Yet she lingered a moment. “Put on those things,” she
said, with a sudden happy flash of eyes and teeth, “and lie close till I
come.” And then she sped away home.
But midway up the distance she felt her feet going slower, and something
at her heartstrings seemed to be pulling her back. She stopped, turned,
and glanced to where he had been standing. Had she seen him then, she
might have returned. But he had disappeared. She gave her first sigh,
and then ran quickly again. It must be nearly ten o'clock! It was not
very long to morning!
She was within a few steps of her own door, when the sleeping woods and
silent air appeared to suddenly awake with a sharp “crack!”
She stopped, paralyzed. Another “crack!” followed, that echoed over to
the far corral. She recalled herself instantly and dashed off wildly to
the woods again.
As she ran she thought of one thing only. He had been “dogged” by one
of his old pursuers and attacked. But there were two shots, and he was
unarmed. Suddenly she remembered that she had left her father's gun
standing against the tree where they were talking. Thank God! she may
again have saved him. She ran to the tree; the gun was gone. She ran
hither and thither, dreading at every step to fall upon his lifeless
body. A new thought struck her; she ran to the corral. The horse was not
there! He must have been able to regain it, and escaped, AFTER the shots
had been fired. She drew a long breath of relief, but it was caught up
in an apprehension of alarm. Her father, awakened from his sleep by the
shots, was hurriedly approaching her.
“What's up now, Salomy Jane?” he demanded excitedly.
“Nothin',” said the girl with an effort. “Nothin', at least, that I can
find.” She was usually truthful because fearless, and a lie stuck in her
throat; but she was no longer fearless, thinking of HIM. “I wasn't abed;
so I ran out as soon as I heard the shots fired,” she answered in return
to his curious gaze.
“And you've hid my gun somewhere where it can't be found,” he said
reproachfully. “Ef it was that sneak Larrabee, and he fired them shots
to lure me out, he might have potted me, without a show, a dozen times
in the last five minutes.”
She had not thought since of her father's enemy! It might indeed
have been he who had attacked Jack. But she made a quick point of the
suggestion. “Run in, dad, run in and find the gun; you've got no show
out here without it.” She seized him by the shoulders from behind,
shielding him from the woods, and hurried him, half expostulating, half
struggling, to the house.
But there no gun was to be found. It was strange; it must have been
mislaid in some corner! Was he sure he had not left it in the barn? But
no matter now. The danger was over; the Larrabee trick had failed;
he must go to bed now, and in the morning they would make a search
together. At the same time she had inwardly resolved to rise before him
and make another search of the wood, and perhaps--fearful joy as she
recalled her promise!--find Jack alive and well, awaiting her!
Salomy Jane slept little that night, nor did her father. But towards
morning he fell into a tired man's slumber until the sun was well up the
horizon. Far different was it with his daughter: she lay with her face
to the window, her head half lifted to catch every sound, from the
creaking of the sun-warped shingles above her head to the far-off
moan of the rising wind in the pine trees. Sometimes she fell into a
breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living over every moment of the stolen
interview; feeling the fugitive's arm still around her, his kisses on
her lips; hearing his whispered voice in her ears--the birth of her new
life! This was followed again by a period of agonizing dread--that he
might even then be lying, his life ebbing away, in the woods, with her
name on his lips, and she resting here inactive, until she half started
from her bed to go to his succor. And this went on until a pale opal
glow came into the sky, followed by a still paler pink on the summit of
the white Sierras, when she rose and hurriedly began to dress. Still so
sanguine was her hope of meeting him, that she lingered yet a moment to
select the brown holland skirt and yellow sunbonnet she had worn when
she first saw him. And she had only seen him twice! Only TWICE! It would
be cruel, too cruel, not to see him again!
She crept softly down the stairs, listening to the long-drawn breathing
of her father in his bedroom, and then, by the light of a guttering
candle, scrawled a note to him, begging him not to trust himself out of
the house until she returned from her search, and leaving the note open
on the table, swiftly ran out into the growing day.
Three hours afterwards Mr. Madison Clay awoke to the sound of loud
knocking. At first this forced itself upon his consciousness as his
daughter's regular morning summons, and was responded to by a grunt of
recognition and a nestling closer in the blankets. Then he awoke with a
start and a muttered oath, remembering the events of last night, and his
intention to get up early, and rolled out of bed. Becoming aware by this
time that the knocking was at the outer door, and hearing the shout of
a familiar voice, he hastily pulled on his boots, his jean trousers,
and fastening a single suspender over his shoulder as he clattered
downstairs, stood in the lower room. The door was open, and waiting
upon the threshold was his kinsman, an old ally in many a
blood-feud--Breckenridge Clay!
“You ARE a cool one, Mad!” said the latter in half-admiring indignation.
“What's up?” said the bewildered Madison.
“YOU ought to be, and scootin' out o' this,” said Breckenridge grimly.
“It's all very well to 'know nothin';' but here Phil Larrabee's friends
hev just picked him up, drilled through with slugs and deader nor a
crow, and now they're lettin' loose Larrabee's two half-brothers on you.
And you must go like a derned fool and leave these yer things behind you
in the bresh,” he went on querulously, lifting Madison Clay's dust-coat,
hat, and shotgun from his horse, which stood saddled at the door.
“Luckily I picked them up in the woods comin' here. Ye ain't got more
than time to get over the state line and among your folks thar afore
they'll be down on you. Hustle, old man! What are you gawkin' and
starin' at?”
Madison Clay had stared amazed and bewildered--horror-stricken.
The incidents of the past night for the first time flashed upon him
clearly--hopelessly! The shot; his finding Salomy Jane alone in
the woods; her confusion and anxiety to rid herself of him; the
disappearance of the shotgun; and now this new discovery of the taking
of his hat and coat for a disguise! SHE had killed Phil Larrabee in that
disguise, after provoking his first harmless shot! She, his own child,
Salomy Jane, had disgraced herself by a man's crime; had disgraced him
by usurping his right, and taking a mean advantage, by deceit, of a foe!
“Gimme that gun,” he said hoarsely.
Breckenridge handed him the gun in wonder and slowly gathering
suspicion. Madison examined nipple and muzzle; one barrel had been
discharged. It was true! The gun dropped from his hand.
“Look here, old man,” said Breckenridge, with a darkening face, “there's
bin no foul play here. Thar's bin no hiring of men, no deputy to do this
job. YOU did it fair and square--yourself?”
“Yes, by God!” burst out Madison Clay in a hoarse voice. “Who says I
didn't?”
Reassured, yet believing that Madison Clay had nerved himself for
the act by an over-draught of whiskey, which had affected his memory,
Breckenridge said curtly, “Then wake up and 'lite' out, ef ye want me to
stand by you.”
“Go to the corral and pick me out a hoss,” said Madison slowly, yet not
without a certain dignity of manner. “I've suthin' to say to Salomy
Jane afore I go.” He was holding her scribbled note, which he had just
discovered, in his shaking hand.
Struck by his kinsman's manner, and knowing the dependent relations
of father and daughter, Breckenridge nodded and hurried away. Left to
himself, Madison Clay ran his fingers through his hair, and straightened
out the paper on which Salomy Jane had scrawled her note, turned it
over, and wrote on the back:--
You might have told me you did it, and not leave your ole father to
find it out how you disgraced yourself and him, too, by a low-down,
underhanded, woman's trick! I've said I done it, and took the blame
myself, and all the sneakiness of it that folks suspect. If I get away
alive--and I don't care much which--you needn't foller. The house and
stock are yours; but you ain't any longer the daughter of your disgraced
father,
MADISON CLAY.
He had scarcely finished the note when, with a clatter of hoofs and a
led horse, Breckenridge reappeared at the door elate and triumphant.
“You're in nigger luck, Mad! I found that stole hoss of Judge
Boompointer's had got away and strayed among your stock in the corral.
Take him and you're safe; he can't be outrun this side of the state
line.”
“I ain't no hoss-thief,” said Madison grimly.
“Nobody sez ye are, but you'd be wuss--a fool--ef you didn't take him.
I'm testimony that you found him among your hosses; I'll tell Judge
Boompointer you've got him, and ye kin send him back when you're safe.
The judge will be mighty glad to get him back, and call it quits. So ef
you've writ to Salomy Jane, come.”
Madison Clay no longer hesitated. Salomy Jane might return at any
moment,--it would be part of her “fool womanishness,”--and he was in
no mood to see her before a third party. He laid the note on the table,
gave a hurried glance around the house, which he grimly believed he was
leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped on the stolen horse,
and swept away with his kinsman.
But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in full view of
the open door. The house was invaded by leaves, pine cones, birds,
and squirrels during the hot, silent, empty days, and at night by shy,
stealthy creatures, but never again, day or night, by any of the Clay
family. It was known in the district that Clay had flown across the
state line, his daughter was believed to have joined him the next day,
and the house was supposed to be locked up. It lay off the main road,
and few passed that way. The starving cattle in the corral at last broke
bounds and spread over the woods. And one night a stronger blast than
usual swept through the house, carried the note from the table to the
floor, where, whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly rotted.
But though the sting of her father's reproach was spared her, Salomy
Jane had no need of the letter to know what had happened. For as she
entered the woods in the dim light of that morning she saw the figure of
Dart gliding from the shadow of a pine towards her. The unaffected cry
of joy that rose from her lips died there as she caught sight of his
face in the open light.
“You are hurt,” she said, clutching his arm passionately.
“No,” he said. “But I wouldn't mind that if”--
“You're thinkin' I was afeard to come back last night when I heard the
shootin', but I DID come,” she went on feverishly. “I ran back here when
I heard the two shots, but you were gone. I went to the corral, but your
hoss wasn't there, and I thought you'd got away.”
“I DID get away,” said Dart gloomily. “I killed the man, thinkin' he
was huntin' ME, and forgettin' I was disguised. He thought I was your
father.”
“Yes,” said the girl joyfully, “he was after dad, and YOU--you killed
him.” She again caught his hand admiringly.
But he did not respond. Possibly there were points of honor which this
horse-thief felt vaguely with her father. “Listen,” he said grimly.
“Others think it was your father killed him. When I did it--for he fired
at me first--I ran to the corral again and took my hoss, thinkin' I
might be follered. I made a clear circuit of the house, and when I found
he was the only one, and no one was follerin', I come back here and took
off my disguise. Then I heard his friends find him in the wood, and I
know they suspected your father. And then another man come through the
woods while I was hidin' and found the clothes and took them away.” He
stopped and stared at her gloomily.
But all this was unintelligible to the girl. “Dad would have got
the better of him ef you hadn't,” she said eagerly, “so what's the
difference?”
“All the same,” he said gloomily, “I must take his place.”
She did not understand, but turned her head to her master. “Then you'll
go back with me and tell him ALL?” she said obediently.
“Yes,” he said.
She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together. She
foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he did not
love as she did. SHE would not have taken these risks against their
happiness.
But alas for ethics and heroism. As they were issuing from the wood
they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time to
hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of Judge
Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.
Salomy Jane turned to her lover.
*****
And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty,
passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to lifelong
shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal, fastidious
parent. But I am confronted by certain facts, on which this romance is
based. A month later a handbill was posted on one of the sentinel pines,
announcing that the property would be sold by auction to the highest
bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of Madison Clay, Esq., and it was
sold accordingly. Still later--by ten years--the chronicler of these
pages visited a certain “stock” or “breeding farm,” in the “Blue Grass
Country,” famous for the popular racers it has produced. He was told
that the owner was the “best judge of horse-flesh in the country.”
“Small wonder,” added his informant, “for they say as a young man out in
California he was a horse-thief, and only saved himself by eloping with
some rich farmer's daughter. But he's a straight-out and respectable man
now, whose word about horses can't be bought; and as for his wife, she's
a beauty! To see her at the 'Springs,' rigged out in the latest fashion,
you'd never think she had ever lived out of New York or wasn't the wife
of one of its millionaires.”
THE MAN AND THE MOUNTAIN
He was such a large, strong man that, when he first set foot in the
little parallelogram I called my garden, it seemed to shrink to half its
size and become preposterous. But I noticed at the same time that he was
holding in the open palm of his huge hand the roots of a violet, with
such infinite tenderness and delicacy that I would have engaged him as
my gardener on the spot. But this could not be, as he was already the
proud proprietor of a market-garden and nursery on the outskirts of the
suburban Californian town where I lived. He would, however, come for two
days in the week, stock and look after my garden, and impart to my
urban intellect such horticultural hints as were necessary. His name was
“Rutli,” which I presumed to be German, but which my neighbors rendered
as “Rootleigh,” possibly from some vague connection with his occupation.
His own knowledge of English was oral and phonetic. I have a delightful
recollection of a bill of his in which I was charged for “fioletz,” with
the vague addition of “maine cains.” Subsequent explanation proved it to
be “many kinds.”
Nevertheless, my little garden bourgeoned and blossomed under his
large, protecting hand. I became accustomed to walk around his feet
respectfully when they blocked the tiny paths, and to expect the total
eclipse of that garden-bed on which he worked, by his huge bulk. For the
tiniest and most reluctant rootlet seemed to respond to his caressing
paternal touch; it was a pretty sight to see his huge fingers tying up
some slender stalk to its stick with the smallest thread, and he had
a reverent way of laying a bulb or seed in the ground, and then gently
shaping and smoothing a small mound over it, which made the little
inscription on the stick above more like an affecting epitaph than
ever. Much of this gentleness may have been that apology for his great
strength, common with large men; but his face was distinctly amiable,
and his very light blue eyes were at times wistful and doglike in their
kindliness. I was soon to learn, however, that placability was not
entirely his nature.