THE FIRST CALLER
Toward noon Poche was carefully feeling his way down the rocky canyon of
Clinker Creek, over a forgotten road. Oliver walked, for Poche needs
must scramble over huge boulders, fallen pines, and tangles of
driftwood. The road followed the course of the creek for the most part,
and in many places the creek had broken through and washed great gaps.
But the country was delightful. Wild grapevines grew in profusion at the
creekside, gracefully festooned from overhanging buckeye limbs. Odorous
alders, several varieties of willow, and white oak also followed the
watercourse; and up on the hills on either side were black oaks and live
oaks, together with yellow and sugar and digger pines, and spruce.
Everywhere grew the now significant poison oak.
Finally Poche scraped through chaparral that almost hid the road and
came out in a clearing. Oliver at last stood looking at his future home.
A quaint old cabin, with a high peaked roof, apparently in better repair
than he had expected, stood on a little rise above the creek. The canyon
widened here, and narrowed again farther down. The creek bowed and
followed the base of the steep hills to the west. A level strip of land
comprising about an acre paralleled the creek, and invited tillage. All
about the clearing, perhaps fifteen acres in area, stood tall pines and
spruce, and magnificent oaks rose above the cabin, their great limbs
sprawled over it protectingly. Acres and acres of heavy, impenetrable
chaparral covered both steep slopes beyond the conifers.
For several minutes Oliver drank in the beauty of it, then heaved
himself into the saddle and galloped to the cabin over the unobstructed
land.
He loosed Poche when the saddle and bridle were off, and the horse
eagerly buried his muzzle in the tall green grass. Up in the branches
paired California linnets, red breasted for their love season, went over
plans and specifications for nest-building with much conversation and
flit-flit of feathered wings. Wild canaries engaged in a like pursuit.
Overhead in the heavens an eagle sailed. From the sunny chaparral came
the scolding quit-quit-quit of mother quail, while the pompous cocks
perched themselves at the tops of manzanita bushes and whistled, "Cut
that out! Cut that out!" All Nature was home-building; and Oliver forgot
the loss of the fortune he had expected at his father's death and caught
the spirit.
He collected oak limbs and built a fire. He carried water from the creek
and set it on to boil. While waiting for this he strolled about,
revelling in the soft spring air, fragrant with the smell of wild
flowers.
That the cabin had been occupied often by hunters and other wanderers in
the canyon was evidenced by the many carvings on the door and signs of
bygone campfires all about. He stepped upon the rotting porch and
studied the monograms, initials, and flippant messages of the lonely men
who had passed that way.
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here" was carved in ancient letters just
under the lintel of the door. Next he was informed that "Fools names,
like their faces, are always seen in public places." "Only a sucker
would live here" was the parting decision of some disgruntled guest.
"Home, Sweet Home" adorned the bottom of the door. One panel had proved
an excellent target, and no less than twenty bullet holes had made a
sieve of it. "Welcome, Wanderer!" and "Dew Drop Inn" and "Though lost to
sight to memory dear" occupied conspicuous places. Then on the
right-hand frame he noticed this:
[Illustration: Beware]
The carving was neatly executed. The leaves represented were
indisputably those of the poison oak.
Had some one carved this in a jocular effort to warn chance visitors to
the place of the danger of the poison weed? Or did the carving represent
the emblem of the Poison Oakers?
Oliver smiled grimly and opened the door.
He passed through the three small rooms of the house and investigated
the loft. The structure seemed solid. A new roof would be necessary, and
new windows and frames and a new porch; and as Oliver was no mean
carpenter, he thought he could make the cabin snug and tight for
seventy-five dollars.
The front door had closed of itself, he found, when he started back to
his campfire. He stopped in the main room, and a smile, slightly bitter,
flickered across his lips. As neatly carved as was the symbol of the
Poison Oakers outside--if that was what it was--and evidently executed
by the same hand, was this, on the inside of the door:
JESSAMY, MY SWEETHEART
Oliver went on out and squatted over his fire, peeling potatoes. His
blue eyes grew studious. In the flickering blaze he saw the picture of a
black-eyed, black-haired girl on a white horse crouched on its haunches.
"Great Scott!" he muttered. "I'll have to forget that!"
* * * * *
In the month that followed, Oliver Drew, spurred by feverish enthusiasm,
worked miracles on the Old Tabor Ivison Place. He repaired the line
fences and rehabilitated the cabin; bought a burro and pack-saddle and
packed in lumber and tools and household necessities; fenced off his
experimental garden on the level land with rabbit-tight netting; cleaned
and boxed the spring; and early in May was following the spading up of
his garden plot by planting vegetable seed.
With all this behind him, he went at the clearing of the road that
connected him with his kind. Today as he laboured with pick and shovel
and bar he was cheerful, though his thoughts clung to the subject of his
father's death and the odd situation in which it had left him. He had
fully expected to inherit properties and money to the extent of a
hundred thousand dollars. He was not particularly resentful because this
had not come to pass, for he never had been a pampered young man; but
the mystery of his father's last message puzzled and chagrined him.
He would always remember Peter Drew as a peculiar man. He had been a
kindly father, but a reticent one. There were many pages in his past
that never had been opened to his son. Oliver was the child of Peter
Drew's second wife. About the queer old Westerner's former marriage he
had been told practically nothing.
Believing his father to have been of sound mind when he penned that last
strange communication, Oliver could not hold that the situation which it
imposed was not for the best. Surely old Peter Drew had had some wise
reason for his act, and in the end Oliver would know what it was. He had
been told to seek the Clinker Creek Country to learn the question that
had puzzled his father for thirty years, to decide whether the proper
answer was Yes or No, and communicate his decision to his father's
lawyers. That was all. When in the wisdom which his father had supposed
would be the natural result of his son's university training he had made
his decision and placed it before these legal gentlemen, what would
happen? Speculation over this led nowhere.
At first it had seemed to Oliver that the mission with which he had been
intrusted was more or less a secret matter, and that he must keep still
about it. Then as the staunch cow-pony bore him nearer and nearer to the
Clinker Creek Country it gradually dawned upon him that, by so doing, he
might stand a poor chance of even finding out what had puzzled his sire.
To say nothing of the answer which he was to seek. It was then he
decided that he had nothing to hide and must place his situation before
the people of the country who would likely be able to help him. Hence
his confidences to Mr. Damon Tamroy.
Tamroy had aided him not at all; but the 'Forty-niner, Old Dad Sloan,
knew something. Dan Smeed, outlaw, highwayman, had owned a saddle and
bridle like Oliver's. The old man had mysteriously mentioned the lost
mine of Bolivio, and had said the settings in Oliver's _conchas_ were
gems. If only the old man could be made to talk!
The muffled thud of a horse's hoofs came between the strokes of Oliver's
pick. With an odd and unfamiliar sensation he glimpsed a white horse and
rider approaching through the pines.
It was she--Jessamy Selden--the black-haired, black-eyed girl of whom he
reluctantly had thought so often since his first day in the Clinker
Creek Country.
She was riding straight down the canyon, the white mare gingerly picking
her way between boulders and snarls of driftwood. The girl looked up.
Oliver felt that she saw him. Her ears could not have been insensible to
the ring of his pick on the flinty stones. She did not leave the trail,
however, but continued on in his direction.
He rested on the handle of his tool and waited.
"Good morning," he ventured, sweeping off his battered hat, as the mare
stopped without pressure on the reins and gravely contemplated him.
The girl smiled and returned his greeting brightly.
"If you had waited a few days longer for your ride down here," said
Oliver, "I'd have had a better trail for you."
"Oh, I don't know that I want it any better," she laughed. "I like
things pretty much as they are, when Old Mother Nature has built them. I
ride down this way frequently."
She was no fragile reed, this girl. She was rather more substantially
built than most members of her sex. Her figure was straight and tall and
rounded, and her strong, graceful neck upreared itself proudly between
sturdy shoulders. Grace and strength, rather than purely feminine
beauty, predominated in the impression she created in Oliver. She wore a
man's Stetson hat over her lavish crown of coal-black hair, a man's
flannel shirt, a whipcord divided skirt, and dark-russet riding boots.
The saddle that she rode in had not been built for a woman to handle,
and, with its long, pointed tapaderos, must have weighed close to fifty
pounds. The steady, friendly, confident gaze of her large black eyes was
thrilling. A man instinctively felt that, if he could win this woman, he
would have acquired a wife among a thousand, a loyal friend and comrade,
and a partner who could and would shoulder more than a woman's share of
their load.
Still, Oliver knew nothing at all about her. What he had heard of her
was not exactly of the best. Yet he felt that she was gloriously all
right, and did not try to argue otherwise.
"Well, I suppose I must introduce myself first," she was saying in her
full, ringing tones. "I'm Jessamy Selden. My name is not Selden, though,
but Lomax. When my mother married Adam Selden I took her new name. I
heard somebody had moved onto the Old Ivison Place, and I deliberately
rode down to get acquainted."
"You waited a month, I notice," Oliver laughingly reproached. "My name
is Oliver Drew. If you'll get off your horse I'll tell you what a
wonderful man I am."
She swung to the ground and held out a strong, brown, ungloved hand.
"I'll walk to your cabin with you," she said, "if you'll invite me. I'd
like to see how you've been improving your time since your arrival."
Scarce able to find words with which to meet such delightful frankness,
Oliver walked beside her, the white mare following and nosing at his
pockets to prove that she was a privileged character.
The girl loosed her within the inclosure, and let her drag her reins.
Poche trotted up to make the white's acquaintance, followed by the new
mouse-coloured burro, Smith, who long since had assumed a "where thou
goest I will go" affection for the bay saddler.
Jessamy Selden came to a stop before the cabin, her black eyes dancing.
"Who would have thought," she said in low tones, "that the Clinker Creek
people ever would see the old Ivison cabin rebuilt and inhabited once
more! How sturdily it must have been built to stand up against wind and
storm all these years. Are you going to invite me in and show me
around?" She levelled that direct glance at him and showed her white
teeth in a smile.
Oliver was thinking of the carving on the inside of the old door,
"Jessamy, My Sweetheart." He had not replaced the door with a new one,
for every penny counted. It still was serviceable; and, besides, there
seemed to be a sort of companionship about the carved observations of
the unknowns who had been sheltered by the old cabin during the past
fifteen years.
"You've been in the house often, I suppose?" He made it a question.
"Oh, yes," she said. "I've lunched in it many a time, and have run in
out of the rain during winter months. I slept in it all night once."
"You seem to be an independent sort of young woman," suggested Oliver.
"I'm a rather lonely sort of woman, if that's what you mean," she
replied. "Yes, I ride about lots alone. I like it. Don't you want me to
go in?"
"Er--why, certainly," he stammered. "Please don't think me inhospitable.
Come on."
He led the way, and stood back for her at the door. He would leave the
door open, swung back into the corner, he thought, so that she would not
see the carving. She had been in the cabin many times. Did she know the
carving to be there? Of course it might have been executed since her
last visit, though it did not seem very fresh. Who had carved the words?
Oliver could imagine any of the young Clinker Creek swains as being
secretly in love with this marvellous girl, and pouring out his tortured
soul through the blade of his jack-knife when securely hidden from
profane eyes in this vast wilderness.
She passed complimentary remarks about his practically built home-made
furniture, and the neatness and necessary simplicity of everything.
"What an old maid you are for one so young!" she laughed. "And, please,
what's the typewriter for--if I'm not too bold?"
"Well," said Oliver, "it occurred to me that I must make a living down
here. I'm a graduate of the State College of Agriculture, and I like to
farm and write about it. I've sold several articles to agricultural
papers. I'm going to experiment here, and try to make a living by
writing up the results!"
"Why, how perfectly fine!" she cried enthusiastically. "I couldn't
imagine anything more engrossing. I'm a State University girl."
"You don't say!"
And this furnished a topic for ten minutes' conversation.
"If you're as good a writer and farmer as you are tinker and carpenter,"
she observed, passing into the front room again, "you'll do splendidly."
She was standing, straight as a young spruce, hands on hips, looking
with twinkling eyes at the open door. "The old door still hangs, I see,"
she murmured. "Now just why didn't you replace it, Mr. Drew?"
Oliver looked apprehensive. "Well," he replied hesitatingly, "for
several reasons. First, a new door costs money, and so would the lumber
with which to make one--and I haven't much of that article. Second, I
get some amusement from looking at those old carvings and speculating on
the possible personalities of the carvers. For all I know, some great
celebrities' ideas may be among those expressed there--some future great
man, at any rate. The boy one meets in the street may one day be
president, you know. Then there's a sort of companionship about those
names and monograms and quotations. The fellow that informs me that only
suckers live here I'd like to meet. He was so blunt about it, so sure.
He--er--"
Smiling, she had stepped to the door and, arms still akimbo, allowed her
glance to travel from one design to another. She raised an arm and
levelled a finger.
"What do you think of that one?" she asked.
"Well," said Oliver, "that's a rather well executed poison oak leaf. The
hills are covered with the plant. I imagine that some wanderer not
immune from the poison came into contact with it, and, though his eyes
were swelled half shut and his fingers itched and tingled, his right
hand had not lost its cunning. So he took out his trusty blade and
carved a warning for all future pilgrims who chanced this way to beware
of this tree that is in the midst of the garden, and to not touch it
lest they--"
"Itch," Jessamy gravely put in. "Quite pretty and poetic," she
supplemented. "But you are entirely wrong, Mr. Drew. That carving is,
first of all, a copy of the brand of Old Man Selden, and you'll find it
on all his cows. All but the word 'Beware,' of course, you understand.
Second, it represents the silly symbol of a gang that infests this
country known as the Poison Oakers. Oh, you've heard of them!" she had
turned suddenly and surprised the look on his face.
"It sounds very bloodthirsty," he laughed confusedly.
"I'll tell you more, then, when I know you better," she said. "No, I'll
tell you today," she added quickly.
Then before he could make a move she had closed the door to examine what
might be carved on the inner side.
"Tell me now," said Oliver quickly. "Try this chair here by the window.
I'm rather proud of this one. It's my first attempt at a morris ch--"
"Come here, please," she commanded, standing with her back to him.
"Don't act so like a boy," she reproved as he dutifully stepped up
behind her. "Anybody would know you are clumsily trying to detract my
attention from--that."
The brown finger was pointing straight at JESSAMY, MY SWEETHEART.
She turned and levelled her frank, unabashed eyes straight at his.
"So that's why you hesitated about inviting me in," she stated, her lips
twitching and dimples appearing and disappearing in her cheeks.
"Frankly, yes," he told her gravely.
Her glance did not leave him. "Mr. Tamroy told me he had mentioned me to
you," she said. "So of course you knew, when you saw this carving, that
I was the subject of the raving. And when you saw me you wished to spare
me embarrassment. Thank you. But you see I'm not at all embarrassed. I
have never before seen this masterpiece in wood, and imagine it has been
done since I was in the cabin last. Let's see--I doubt if I've been
inside for a year or more. I think perhaps Mr. Digger Foss is the one
who tried to make his emotions deathless by this work of art. 'Jessamy,
My Sweetheart,' eh?" She threw back her glorious head and laughed till
two tears streamed down her tanned cheeks. "Poor Digger!" she said
soberly at last. "I suppose he does love me."
"Who wouldn't," thought Oliver, but bit his lips instead of speaking.
"You may leave that, Mr. Drew," she told him, "until you get ready to
replace the old door with a new one. I would not have the irrefutable
evidence of at least one conquest blotted out for worlds. Now let's go
out in that glorious sunlight, and I'll tell you about Old Man Selden
and the Poison Oakers."