CHAPTER IV

The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were

visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine forests

exhaled the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding, the

ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland

which climbed Red Mountain at its southern aspect the long spike of the

monkshood shot up from its broad-leaved stool, and once more shook

its dark-blue bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was soft and

green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.

The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,

and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they

reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one. General superstition

had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.

There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating that,

at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for

a few days, a series of “side-splitting” and “screaming farces”; that,

alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a

grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc. These

announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk,

and were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the

master's scholars. The master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of

thing was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous

evening the master and Mliss “assisted.”

The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the

melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.

But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and felt

something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect upon her

excitable nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of

her panting little heart. Her small passionate lips were slightly parted

to give vent to her hurried breath. Her widely opened lids threw up and

arched her black eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal comicalities

of the funny man, for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly

affected to the delicate extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief,

as was the tender-hearted “Clytie,” who was talking with her “feller”

and ogling the master at the same moment. But when the performance was

over, and the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a

long deep breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a

half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture. Then she said, “Now take me

home!” and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once more

in fancy on the mimic stage.

On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to ridicule

the whole performance. Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss thought that the

young lady who acted so beautifully was really in earnest, and in love

with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes. Well, if she were in love

with him it was a very unfortunate thing! “Why?” said Mliss, with an

upward sweep of the drooping lid. “Oh! well, he couldn't support his

wife at his present salary, and pay so much a week for his fine clothes,

and then they wouldn't receive as much wages if they were married as if

they were merely lovers--that is,” added the master, “if they are not

already married to somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty

young countess takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain,

or snuffs the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant. As

to the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and must

cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of that

mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for I bought

some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty

good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I don't think people

ought to take advantage of it and give him black eyes and throw him in

the mud. Do you? I am sure he might owe me two dollars and a half a

long time, before I would throw it up in his face, as the fellow did the

other night at Wingdam.”

Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in his

eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a faint

idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species of sardonic

humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her speech. But

the young man continued in this strain until they had reached Mrs.

Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving

the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and shading

his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren

glances, he excused himself, and went home.

For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company, Mliss

was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon ramble was

for once omitted, owing to the absence of his trustworthy guide. As he

was putting away his books and preparing to leave the schoolhouse, a

small voice piped at his side, “Please, sir?” The master turned and

there stood Aristides Morpher.

“Well, my little man,” said the master, impatiently, “what is it?

quick!”

“Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away

agin.”

“What's that, sir?” said the master, with that unjust testiness with

which we always receive disagreeable news.

“Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her

talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now; and

please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a speech

as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted right off by

heart,” and the little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.

“What actor?” asked the master.

“Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And gold pin. And gold chain,”

said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke out his

breath.

The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant tightness

in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road. Aristides trotted

along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his short legs to the

master's strides, when the master stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped

up against him. “Where were they talking?” asked the master, as if

continuing the conversation.

“At the Arcade,” said Aristides.

When they reached the main street the master paused. “Run down home,”

said he to the boy. “If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me.

If she isn't there, stay home; run!” And off trotted the short-legged

Aristides.

The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building containing

a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant. As the young man crossed the

plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by turned and looked

after him. He looked at his clothes, took out his handkerchief, and

wiped his face before he entered the barroom. It contained the usual

number of loungers, who stared at him as he entered. One of them looked

at him so fixedly and with such a strange expression that the master

stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only his own reflection in

a large mirror. This made the master think that perhaps he was a little

excited, and so he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of

the tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of

advertisements.

He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and into the

billiard room. The child was not there. In the latter apartment a person

was standing by one of the tables with a broad-brimmed glazed hat on his

head. The master recognized him as the agent of the dramatic company;

he had taken a dislike to him at their first meeting, from the peculiar

fashion of wearing his beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of his

search was not there, he turned to the man with a glazed hat. He had

noticed the master, but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in

which vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a billiard cue in his hand,

he pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table. The master

stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their glances met,

the master walked up to him.

He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to speak,

something kept rising in his throat and retarded his utterance, and his

own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant, low, and resonant. “I

understand,” he began, “that Melissa Smith, an orphan, and one of my

scholars, has talked with you about adopting your profession. Is that

so?”

The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an imaginary

shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions. Then, walking round

the table, he recovered the ball and placed it upon the spot. This duty

discharged, getting ready for another shot, he said:

“S'pose she has?”

The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table in

his gloved hand, he went on:

“If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her guardian,

and responsible for her career. You know as well as I do the kind of

life you offer her. As you may learn of anyone here, I have already

brought her out of an existence worse than death--out of the streets and

the contamination of vice. I am trying to do so again. Let us talk like

men. She has neither father, mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking

to give her an equivalent for these?”

The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then

looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.

“I know that she is a strange, willful girl,” continued the master, “but

she is better than she was. I believe that I have some influence over

her still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no further

steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman, leave her to me. I

am willing--” But here something rose again in the master's throat, and

the sentence remained unfinished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised his

head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:

“Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young man!”

The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the glance

than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all these. The

best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The master

felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy finding expression in

the one act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face. The blow

sent the glazed hat one way and the cue another, and tore the glove

and skin from the master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened up

the corners of the fellow's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his

beard for some time to come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of many

feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports

followed each other in rapid succession. Then they closed again about

his opponent, and the master was standing alone. He remembered picking

bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve with his left hand. Someone

was holding his other hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding

from the blow, but his fingers were clenched around the handle of a

glittering knife. He could not remember when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the master

to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him as well

as he could with his parched throat about “Mliss.” “It's all right,

my boy,” said Mr. Morpher. “She's home!” And they passed out into the

street together. As they walked along Mr. Morpher said that Mliss had

come running into the house a few moments before, and had dragged him

out, saying that somebody was trying to kill the master at the Arcade.

Wishing to be alone, the master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not

seek the agent again that night, and parted from him, taking the road

toward the schoolhouse. He was surprised in nearing it to find the door

open--still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.

The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most sensitive

organizations, a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late

adversary still rankled in his heart. It was possible, he thought, that

such a construction might be put upon his affection for the child,

which at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had she not voluntarily

abnegated his authority and affection? And what had everybody else said

about her? Why should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last

obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had

been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and risked

his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing? What would the

people say? What would his friends say? What would McSnagley say?

In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to meet was

Mliss. He entered the door, and going up to his desk, told the child, in

a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished to be alone. As she

rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting down, buried his head in his

hands. When he looked up again she was still standing there. She was

looking at his face with an anxious expression.

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

“No!” said the master.

“That's what I gave you the knife for!” said the child, quickly.

“Gave me the knife?” repeated the master, in bewilderment.

“Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the bar. Saw you hit him.

Saw you both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why

didn't you stick him?” said Mliss rapidly, with an expressive twinkle of

the black eyes and a gesture of the little red hand.

The master could only look his astonishment.

“Yes,” said Mliss. “If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with the

play-actors. Why was I off with the play-actors? Because you wouldn't

tell me you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell the Doctor so.

I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those Morphers. I'd rather die

first.”

With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her

character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding

them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and in the queer

pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into when unduly excited:

“That's the poison plant you said would kill me. I'll go with the

play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here. I don't care which. I won't

stay here, where they hate and despise me! Neither would you let me, if

you didn't hate and despise me too!”

The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over the

edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the corner of

her apron as if they had been wasps.

“If you lock me up in jail,” said Mliss, fiercely, “to keep me from the

play-actors, I'll poison myself. Father killed himself--why shouldn't

I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I always carry it

here,” and she struck her breast with her clenched fist.

The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of

the passionate little figure before him. Seizing her hands in his and

looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:

“Lissy, will you go with ME?”

The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, “Yes.”

“But now--tonight?”

“Tonight.”

And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that had

once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it seemed

she should not tread again alone. The stars glittered brightly above

them. For good or ill the lesson had been learned, and behind them the

school of Red Mountain closed upon them forever.

THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER

The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a

southwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by

the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam

clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air

was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor Commandante,

Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep embrasured window of the

Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt breath of the distant sea buffet a

color into his smoke-dried cheeks.

The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window of

the guardroom. He may have been reviewing the events of the year now

about to pass away. But, like the garrison at the Presidio, there

was little to review; the year, like its predecessors, had been

uneventful--the days had slipped by in a delicious monotony of simple

duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The regularly recurring

feasts and saints' days, the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the

rare transport ship and rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of

his patriarchal life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly

no failure. Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the

wants of Presidio and Mission. Isolated from the family of nations,

the wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last

earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on the

other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness. In short, it

was that glorious Indian summer of California history around which so

much poetical haze still lingers--that bland, indolent autumn of

Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican

independence and the reviving spring of American conquest.

The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire that

burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth. A pile of copybooks, the

work of the Presidio school, lay on the table. As he turned over the

leaves with a paternal interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture

text--the first pious pothooks of the pupils of San Carlos--an audible

commentary fell from his lips: “'Abimelech took her from Abraham'--ah,

little one, excellent!--'Jacob sent to see his brother'--body of Christ!

that upstroke of thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall see

it!” A film of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye--the right,

alas! twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He rubbed

it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued: “'The

Ishmaelites having arrived--'”

He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the

threshold, and a stranger entered. With the instinct of an old soldier,

the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned quickly toward

the wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But

it was not there, and as he recalled that the last time he had seen that

weapon it was being ridden up and down the gallery by Pepito, the infant

son of Bautista, the tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented

himself with frowning upon the intruder.

But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful. He

was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea boots of

a mariner. Except a villainous smell of codfish, there was little about

him that was peculiar.

His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent

than elegant or precise--his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of

the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on

a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather

into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ride out the gale

under the headlands of the blessed Trinity, and no more. Water he

did not need, having taken in a supply at Bodega. He knew the strict

surveillance of the Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign

vessels, and would do nothing against the severe discipline and good

order of the settlement. There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone

as he glanced toward the desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the

open unguarded gate. The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had

discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm, and was

then sound asleep in the corridor.

The Commander hesitated. The port regulations were severe, but he was

accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old order

issued ten years before, regarding the American ship COLUMBIA, there

was no precedent to guide him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of

humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request. It is but just to

the Commander to say that his inability to enforce a refusal did not

weigh with his decision. He would have denied with equal disregard of

consequences that right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded

so gracefully to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated only

that there should be no communication between the ship and shore. “For

yourself, Senor Captain,” he continued, “accept my hospitality. The

fort is yours as long as you shall grace it with your distinguished

presence”; and with old-fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance of

withdrawing from the guardroom.

Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled fort,

the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the

shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting the Commander's offer

literally, conceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let

slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a timely

reflection of the commercial unimportance of the transaction checked

him. He only took a capacious quid of tobacco as the Commander gravely

drew a settle before the fire, and in honor of his guest untied the

black-silk handkerchief that bound his grizzled brows.

What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes me

not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to relate.

I have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker, and under

the influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his host, he became

still more loquacious. And think of a man with a twenty years' budget

of gossip! The Commander learned, for the first time, how Great Britain

lost her colonies; of the French Revolution; of the great Napoleon,

whose achievements, perhaps, Peleg colored more highly than the

Commander's superiors would have liked. And when Peleg turned

questioner, the Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made himself

master of the gossip of the Mission and Presidio, the “small-beer”

chronicles of that pastoral age, the conversion of the heathen, the

Presidio schools, and even asked the Commander how he had lost his eye!

It is said that at this point of the conversation Master Peleg produced

from about his person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled

trifles, and even forced some of them upon his host. It is further

alleged that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of

aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and behaved in

a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-flown Spanish

poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice divers madrigals and

heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion; chiefly in regard to a

“little one” who was his, the Commander's, “soul”! These allegations,

perhaps unworthy the notice of a serious chronicler, should be received

with great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay. That the

Commander, however, took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest

the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous

manner about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of

this narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many

protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had abated,

took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the GENERAL COURT.

When the day broke the ship was gone.

I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is said that the

holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in the

plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses; that for

many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the settlement;

that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were

found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and that several

bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but

were quite inadequate to the purposes of provender, were discovered

in the stable of the blacksmith. But when the reader reflects upon the

sacredness of a Yankee trader's word, the stringent discipline of

the Spanish port regulations, and the proverbial indisposition of my

countrymen to impose upon the confidence of a simple people, he will at

once reject this part of the story.

A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander. The sun

was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up in bed, and

through the force of habit rubbed his left eye. As the remembrance of

the previous night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran

to the window. There was no ship in the bay. A sudden thought seemed to

strike him, and he rubbed both of his eyes. Not content with this, he

consulted the metallic mirror which hung beside his crucifix. There

was no mistake; the Commander had a visible second eye--a right one--as

good, save for the purposes of vision, as the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation, but

one opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It was one of those rare miracles

vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to the heathen,

through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself. That their

beloved Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith, should be the

recipient of this miraculous manifestation was most fit and seemly. The

Commander himself was reticent; he could not tell a falsehood--he dared

not tell the truth. After all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed

that the powers of his right eye were actually restored, was it wise and

discreet for him to undeceive them? For the first time in his life the

Commander thought of policy--for the first time he quoted that text

which has been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of

being “all things to all men.” Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little settlement.

The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise

a baleful effect upon the beholder. No one could look at it without

winking. It was cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching. More than that,

it seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience--a faculty of seeing

through and into the inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon. The

soldiers of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their

commander, and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning.

The servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that

seemed to pursue them. The children of the Presidio school smirched

their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize

pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke when her patron stood

beside her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity

took the place of trust, confidence, and security throughout San Carlos.

Whenever the Right Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his

miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its effect upon others, he only

saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the crafty Peleg

had hinted on that eventful New Year's eve. His most trusty retainers

stammered, blushed, and faltered before him. Self-accusations,

confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or extravagant excuses

and apologies met his mildest inquiries. The very children that he

loved--his pet pupil, Paquita--seemed to be conscious of some hidden

sin. The result of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly.

For the first half-year the Commander's voice and eye were at variance.

He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful in speech. Gradually, however,

his voice took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical,

impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was plain

that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to the

Commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful

solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few who were first to ascribe the

right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the special grace of

the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of witchcraft and the agency

of Luzbel, the evil one. It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo

Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander or amenable to local

authority. But the reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no

power over the political executive, and all attempts at spiritual

advice failed signally. He retired baffled and confused from his first

interview with the Commander, who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction

in the fateful power of his glance. The holy Father contradicted

himself, exposed the fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is

asserted, committed himself to several undoubted heresies. When the

Commander stood up at mass, if the officiating priest caught that

skeptical and searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined. Even the

power of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the

affections of the people and the good order of the settlement departed

from San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the white

walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue the leathern

jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed his

dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and seamed with drought; a blight

had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed

and ardently prayed for, came not. The sky was as tearless as the

right eye of the Commander. Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and

plotting among the Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the

more firmly, tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and

looked up his Toledo.

The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the hour

of evening prayers, alone in the guardroom. He no longer attended

the services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such times to some

solitary spot, where he spent the interval in silent meditation. The

firelight played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the bowed

figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he felt a small hand

touch his arm, and looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little

Indian pupil, at his knee. “Ah, littlest of all,” said the Commander,

with something of his old tenderness, lingering over the endearing

diminutives of his native speech--“sweet one, what doest thou here? Art

thou not afraid of him whom everyone shuns and fears?”

“No,” said the little Indian, readily, “not in the dark. I hear your

voice--the old voice; I feel your touch--the old touch; but I see not

your eye, Senor Commandante. That only I fear--and that, O senor, O my

father,” said the child, lifting her little arms towards his--“that I

know is not thine own!”

The Commander shuddered and turned away. Then, recovering himself, he

kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire. A few hours

later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he sought his own

couch and slept peacefully.

At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through the

low embrasure of the Commander's apartment. Other figures were flitting

through the parade ground, which the Commander might have seen had he

not slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch and

listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration. Something glittered in

the firelight as the savage lifted his arm; another moment and the sore

perplexities of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have been over, when

suddenly the savage started and fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The

Commander slept peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and

unaltered, glared coldly on the would-be assassin. The man fell to the

earth in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.

To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast upon

the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of a moment.

Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily

driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received a

blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that mysterious organ,

it was gone. Never again was it found, and never again, for bale or

bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of the Commander.

With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos. The rain

returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored between

priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over the sere

hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their martial

preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral

content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San Carlos. And

far southward crept the GENERAL COURT with its master, Peleg Scudder,

trafficking in beads and peltries with the Indians, and offering glass

eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions to the chiefs.

NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD

PART I--IN THE FIELD

It was near the close of an October day that I began to be disagreeably

conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had been riding since sunrise, and

my course through the depressing monotony of the long level landscape

affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,

performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena--a California sky.

The recurring stretches of brown and baked fields, the gaping fissures

in the dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills, and the

herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like features of some glittering

stereoscopic picture that never changed. Active exercise might have

removed this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long

since given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.

It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader under

that title. The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons

were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry

atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow hectic

which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical

for such thin disguises. She merely turned the Hippocratic face to the

spectator, with the old diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted

features.

In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite any

but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and

the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was

consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed,

with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the

plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to loom up as I

urged my horse forward. A half-hour's active spurring brought me to a

corral, and a little beyond a house, so low and broad it seemed at first

sight to be half-buried in the earth.

My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like some

monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the

vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls

for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No

projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle,

or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking

tin basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the

sinking sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded

existence. The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed

against the rattling wind.

To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to the

rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building by a

slight platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing there, and

met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led

the way to the principal room. As I entered, four young men who were

reclining by the fire slightly altered their attitudes of perfect

repose, but beyond that betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound

started from a dark corner with a growl, but was immediately kicked by

the old man into obscurity, and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I

instantly received the impression that for a long time the group by the

fire had not uttered a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly

stated my business.

Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account of the Espiritu Santo

Rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of township lines, so

as to connect with the near exteriors of private grants. There had been

some intervention to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had preempted

adjacent--“settled land warrants,” interrupted the old man. “Ah, yes!

Land warrants--and then this was Mr. Tryan?”

I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting other

public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face. It was

certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect of

that mining operation known as “ground sluicing”; the harder lines of

underlying character were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and

soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.

There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing atmosphere

of the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement of the contest,

with a fluency, which, like the wind without, showed frequent and

unrestrained expression. He told me--what I had already learned--that

the boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described in the

loose phraseology of the DESENO as beginning in the VALDA or skirt

of the hill, its precise location long the subject of litigation.

I listened and answered with little interest, for my mind was still

distracted by the wind which swept violently by the house, as well as

by his odd face, which was again reflected in the resemblance that the

silent group by the fire bore toward him. He was still talking, and the

wind was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark

addressed to the recumbent figures.

“Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to Altascar's,

tomorrow?”

There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no decided

answer.

“Kin you go, Kerg?”

“Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?”

This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another

hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he was

lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.

“Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?”

“Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to pack

her and the baby agin.”

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited for

the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was one of the

finest things I had ever seen.

“Wise?”

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched

boot into the discourse. The old man flushed quickly.

“I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war down

the river.”

“Said he wouldn't without'en order. Said it was like pulling gum teeth

to get the money from you even then.”

There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's parsimony,

and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in

honorable retirement.

“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with wimmin

and children, p'r'aps you'll go,” said Tryan, with a nervous twitching,

intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:

“Got no saddle.”

“Wot's gone of your saddle?”

“Kerg, there”--indicating his brother with a look such as Cain might

have worn at the sacrifice.

“You lie!” returned Kerg, cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around his

head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which fearlessly met

his own. But it was only for a moment; his arm soon dropped by his side,

and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take

the chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the assurance

that I required no guide when the irrepressible Wise again lifted his

voice:

“Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him? He'll go and introduce you

to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't pertickler.”

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic

allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a

light step on the platform, and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger

present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again,

and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped

lightly together and his very handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly

on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he made

upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and he

cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty called him presently away.

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting the

prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame, listening

to the wind which continually shook the tenement. Besides the one chair

which had acquired a new importance in my eyes, I presently discovered

a crazy table in one corner, with an ink bottle and pen; the latter

in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar to country taverns and

farmhouses. A goodly array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked

the corner; half a dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild

flavor of the horse about them. Some deer and bear skins completed the

inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the shadowy

gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it difficult to

believe I had ever known a different existence. My profession had often

led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among those whose unrestrained

habits and easy unconsciousness made me feel so lonely and uncomfortable

I shrank closer to myself, not without grave doubts--which I think occur

naturally to people in like situations--that this was the general rule

of humanity and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It

was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl

caused a general movement in the family. We walked across the dark

platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was

occupied by a table, at the farther end of which a weak-eyed woman was

already taking her repast as she at the same time gave nourishment to

a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of introduction had been dispensed

with, and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled to slip into a seat

without discomposing or interrupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace,

and the attention of the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and

dried apples.

The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the upper end of the

table often betrayed the presence of the “wellspring of pleasure.” The

conversation generally referred to the labors of the day, and comparing

notes as to the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a

vast improvement upon the previous intellectual feast that when a chance

allusion of mine to the business of my visit brought out the elder

Tryan, the interest grew quite exciting. I remember he inveighed

bitterly against the system of ranch-holding by the “greasers,” as he

was pleased to term the native Californians. As the same ideas have

been sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances they may be

worthy of record.

“Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer doors.

Whar's the papers for it? Was it grants? Mighty fine grants--most of 'em

made arter the 'Merrikans got possession. More fools the 'Merrikans for

lettin' 'em hold 'em. Wat paid for 'em? 'Merrikan and blood money.

“Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country? Wot

for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not

so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin' home

and smokin'. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and

crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort things wurent

allowed in Mizzoori.”

At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and

met the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George. The act did not

escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of seeing that the

rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance against us.

“It was agin Nater, and agin God,” added Tryan. “God never intended

gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens.

That's why he sent 'Merrikans here. Nater never intended such a climate

for lazy lopers. She never gin six months' sunshine to be slept and

smoked away.”

How long he continued and with what further illustration I could not

say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-room. I

was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door leading to a

smaller room, and pointed to a bed.

“You'd better sleep there tonight,” he said; “you'll be more

comfortable, and I'll call you early.”

I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which were

then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The “boys”

returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger log was

thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a furnace, but it

did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it

lit. In half an hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by

day undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received its

owner's full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed

George. I sat there until, wakeful and nervous, I saw the fire fall and

shadows mount the wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the

wind and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling the place

insupportable, I seized my hat and opening the door, ran out briskly

into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind,

whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar

faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran

not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house

was lost in the alder bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before

me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I

noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress

was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as

resembling an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of

the expanding plain. But even here I found no rest. The ridiculous

interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung in my ears,

and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the star, I sought the

house again.

But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform. The

door of the lower building was open, and the old man was sitting beside

the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a look in his face as

though he were hunting up prophecies against the “Greaser.” I turned to

enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure lying

beside the house, on the platform. The broad chest heaving with healthy

slumber, and the open, honest face were familiar. It was George, who had

given up his bed to the stranger among his people. I was about to wake

him, but he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I

went to bed with a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil

figure soothing me to sleep.

I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and

grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my bed,

ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of the

day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been

magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows. A dash

of cold water, with an extra chill on from the tin basin, helped to

brighten me. It was still early, but the family had already breakfasted

and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in the distance showed that the

unfortunate Tom had already “packed” his relatives away. I felt more

cheerful--there are few troubles Youth cannot distance with the start of

a good night's rest. After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George,

in a few moments we were mounted and dashing down the plain.

We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and baked

with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me, overflowed its

banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that morning's ride, the

far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky, the

crisp dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by

the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and

picturesque with flying riata. He rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed,

untiring in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty

were concealed by the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which

levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel

bit that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.

Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we

again bear down into sunlit space. Can this be “Chu Chu,” staid and

respectable filly of American pedigree--Chu Chu, forgetful of plank

roads and cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her small white

feet beneath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust. “Give her her

head; don't you see she likes it?” and Chu Chu seems to like it, and

whether bitten by native tarantula into native barbarism or emulous of

the roan, “blood” asserts itself, and in a moment the peaceful servitude

of years is beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek

widens to a deep gully. We dive into it and up on the opposite side,

carrying a moving cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are

scattered over the plain, grazing quietly or banded together in vast

restless herds. George makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as

if to include them all in his vaquero's loop, and says, “Ours!”

“About how many, George?”

“Don't know.”

“How many?”

“'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head,” says George, reflecting. “We don't

know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run.”

“What are they worth?”

“About thirty dollars a head.”

I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the laughing

George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of the Tryan

household is expressed in that look, for George averts his eye and says,

apologetically:

“I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he says

it ain't no use to settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'. In fact,

he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles should fall through,

and we'd have to get up and move stakes further down.”

Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are

passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center of

the mass. I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and in a few

moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.

“TORO!” shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the band opens a

way for the swinging riata. I can feel their steaming breaths, and their

spume is cast on Chu Chu's quivering flank.

Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove might

have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of

Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to

meet the exigencies of a six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to

wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding dust.

“That's not our brand,” says George; “they're strange stock,” and he

points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological sign of

Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is chasing. But

the herd are closing round us with low mutterings, and George has again

recourse to the authoritative “TORO,” and with swinging riata divides

the “bossy bucklers” on either side. When we are free, and breathing

somewhat more easily, I venture to ask George if they ever attack

anyone.

“Never horsemen--sometimes footmen. Not through rage, you know, but

curiosity. They think a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a

chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in the

pursuit of knowledge. But,” adds George, “here's the lower bench of the

foothills, and here's Altascar's corral, and that White building you see

yonder is the casa.”

A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe building,

baked with the solar beams of many summers. Leaving our horses in the

charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the

sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep shadow and an agreeable

coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool water,

from its contrast with the external glare and heat. In the center of a

low-ceiled apartment sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied

about his head, the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving

his gamboge-colored face. The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added to

the cathedral gloom of the building.

As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George

advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of tenderness

and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the heart by so much

devotion in the careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by

the effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the white

teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the corridor as we

entered.

It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which

would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had

just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But he listened

calmly--not a muscle of his dark face stirring--and the smoke curling

placidly from his lips showed his regular respiration. When I had

finished, he offered quietly to accompany us to the line of demarcation.

George had meanwhile disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in

broken Spanish and English, in the corridor, betrayed his vicinity.

When he returned again, a little absent-minded, the old man, by far

the coolest and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished his

black-silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native

Californians affect. A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he

was waiting. Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in

half an hour from the time of our arrival we were again “loping” in the

staring sunlight.

But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by

restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and by

way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that there might be further

intervention or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned

with a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious “QUE

BUENO?--Your courts are always just.”

The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing

monument of the new line, and there we halted. We were surprised to find

the old man Tryan waiting us. For the first time during our interview

the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek. I

was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner boundaries as

clearly as my recollection served.

“The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this initial

point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen.”

Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of dried

grass in his hands. George and I exchanged glances. He presently arose

from his stooping posture, and advancing to within a few paces of Joseph

Tryan, said, in a voice broken with passion:

“And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my land

in the fashion of my country.”

He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.

“I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES. Take the

LLANO!--and take this with it. May the drought seize your cattle till

their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it

be the curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have made it

of mine!”

We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only the

passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill

concealing his triumph, interrupted:

“Let him curse on. He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than the

cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side

of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers.”

Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet

sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power of his

native invective.

“Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not!--open not, I say, your lying, Judas

lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!--car-r-r-ramba!”

With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant

thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it had

been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the saddle and

galloped away.

George turned to me:

“Will you go back with us tonight?”

I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire, and

the roaring wind, and hesitated.

“Well then, goodby.”

“Goodby, George.”

Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not ridden far when I

turned and looked back. The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was

already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it,

and a picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was my last

indistinct impression of George Tryan.

PART II--IN THE FLOOD

Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was again

in the valley of the Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation

had erased the memory of that event as completely as I supposed it had

obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood of

1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some indefinite yearning, I took

my carpetbag and embarked for the inundated valley.

There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the

GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over the water. The only sound was the

pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two weeks,

and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they

silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of relief to

friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed soberly on

the one absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted by curiosity

listened eagerly to newer details. But with that human disposition to

seize upon any circumstance that might give chance event the exaggerated

importance of instinct, I was half-conscious of something more than

curiosity as an impelling motive.

The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky greeted

us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of

Sacramento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the

hotels was an appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a

dripping rubber-cased mariner called “Joe,” and, wrapping myself in a

shining cloak of the like material, about as suggestive of warmth as

court plaster might have been, took my seat in the stern sheets of his

boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part from the steamer that to

most of the passengers was the only visible connecting link between

us and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled away and entered the

city, stemming a rapid current as we shot the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street--once a cheerful, busy

thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation. The turbid water

which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right angles

in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on

the local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses

on street corners, where they presented abrupt gables to the current, or

by capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in

and out of low-arched doorways. The water was over the top of the

fences surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels

and private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as

roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as the

visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer echoed

to carriage wheel or footfall. The low ripple of water, the occasional

splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of life

and habitation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I lie

lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to

the music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as his brother of

the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee “Giuseppe” has the advantage of

earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic description of the terrors

of the past week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion,

occasionally pointing out a balcony from which some California Bianca

or Laura had been snatched, half-clothed and famished. Giuseppe is

otherwise peculiar, and refuses the proffered fare, for--am I not a

citizen of San Francisco, which was first to respond to the suffering

cry of Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard

Society? No! Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my money. Still, if I

must spend it, there is the Howard Society, and the women and children

without food and clothes at the Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall--a dismal, bleak

place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and plenty,

and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite. But here

Giuseppe tells me of the “Relief Boat” which leaves for the flooded

district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has

taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of

others, and am accepted of those who go forth to succor and help the

afflicted. Giuseppe takes charge of my carpetbag, and does not part from

me until I stand on the slippery deck of “Relief Boat No. 3.”

An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was once

the channel of a peaceful river. But its banks are only defined by

tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that breaks over a

vast inland sea. Stretches of “tule” land fertilized by its once regular

channel and dotted by flourishing ranchos are now cleanly erased. The

cultivated profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted lines in

symmetrical perspective mark orchards that are buried and chilled in the

turbid flood. The roofs of a few farmhouses are visible, and here and

there the smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows

an undaunted life within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds

waiting the fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or

swing in eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons are

stranded everywhere where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the

moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck from the

lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from the willows,

hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying in

rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their

suggestive quiet and concealment.

As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows

oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the

few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary

rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual

misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number

of our passengers. From them we learn how inward-bound vessels report

to have struck the well-defined channel of the Sacramento, fifty miles

beyond the bar. There is a voluntary contribution taken among the

generous travelers for the use of our afflicted, and we part company

with a hearty “Godspeed” on either side. But our signal lights are not

far distant before a familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable

Yankee cheer--which scatters the gloom.

Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks

far in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up near us--the

wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward

the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we

penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our

party into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I

borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise

am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We give way

northerly. It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.

It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars

in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer

is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken

by the “bow oar”:

“Light ahead.”

All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling

light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the

shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon

us.

“Stern, all; a steamer!”

“Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!” is the reply of the coxswain.

“It's a house, and a big one too.”

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the

darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a

window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back

to me with it as I listen with beating heart.

“There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys--lay her alongside.

Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no! here's

another!”

In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor

to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end

of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in

one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I

spring toward him with an exclamation:

“Joseph Tryan!”

He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on

his shoulder, and say:

“Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are they? The

boys--George! Are they here? are they safe?”

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we

involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance,

free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling

through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no

further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their

peace. I make one more effort:

“Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your

ranch--the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!”

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he

repeated to himself “The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--Espiritu

Santo” over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to

fix in his memory.

I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me fearfully

by the hand and said:

“Hush!”

We were silent.

“Listen!” He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear, “I'm a

MOVING OFF!”

“Moving off?”

“Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't you

hear?--there! listen!”

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.

“It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent. They've been here all night.

I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the old man to

move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the

door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why

don't they quit?”

I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further

traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so

much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious

feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them

briefly what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:

“Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock--all gone--gone, gone

for the hides and hoofs,” and he groans bitterly.

“There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and

perhaps the family are safe by this time,” says the coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to

the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though its

strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers in the

stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky

shows the coming day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I had

seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket

near the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of

the old man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about

George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I was awakened

at about eight o'clock in the morning by the engineer, who told me one

of the old man's sons had been picked up and was now on board.

“Is it George Tryan?” I ask quickly.

“Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is,” adds the engineer,

with a smile at some luscious remembrance. “You'll find him for'ard.”

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the

irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and

rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes

that have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking that

circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me

at my ease by at once addressing me:

“These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's

become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!”

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of

admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he has at

last pulled on his feet.

“So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy? He must

have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old

woman. Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!”

At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was

evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage of the

contending emotions to ask about George.

“Don't know whar he is! If he'd tended stock instead of running about

the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have saved

suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky! Say you,” to a

passing boatman, “when are you goin' to give us some grub? I'm hungry

'nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I'll turn butcher when things is

dried up, and save hides, horns, and taller.”

I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer

climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.

“Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?” I ask.

“Thar ain't much to do now,” says the practical young man. “I'll have to

lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight. The land ain't

worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the

ole man'll drive stakes next.”

“I meant as to your father and George, Wise.”

“Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the old

woman and babies last week. George'll turn up somewhar atween this and

Altascar's ef he ain't thar now.”

I ask how the Altascars have suffered.

“Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I shouldn't wonder if

George helped him drive 'em up the foothills. And his casa's built

too high. Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah,” says Wise, with

reflective admiration, “those greasers ain't the darned fools people

thinks 'em. I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er Californy.”

But the appearance of “grub” cut this rhapsody short.

“I shall keep on a little farther,” I say, “and try to find George.”

Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned upon

him.

“I don't think you'll save much. What's the percentage--workin' on

shares, eh!”

I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion of me,

and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's safety might

warrant, I walked away.

From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of George's

self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he had helped

and rescued. But I did not feel disposed to return until I had seen

him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the

foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade

farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting

by the furnace fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat head

swung round, pulled by sturdy and willing hands.

It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen. Our course lay

nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that we were in the

creek of the Espiritu Santo. From time to time the wrecks of barns

were seen, and we passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming

implements.

We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the “LLANO DE ESPIRITU

SANTO.” As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower fresh water

into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride of October

over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant

hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are rowing

silently, and I find my mind, released from its tension, growing

benumbed and depressed as then. The water, too, is getting more shallow

as we leave the banks of the creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly

over the thwarts, I detect the tops of chimisal, which shows the tide

to have somewhat fallen. There is a black mound, bearing to the north of

the line of alder, making an adverse current, which, as we sweep to the

right to avoid, I recognize. We pull close alongside and I call to the

men to stop.

There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, “L. E. S.

I.” Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata. It was George's. It

had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the loose gravelly soil of

the mound was deeply dented with horses' hoofs. The stake was covered

with horsehairs. It was a record, but no clue.

The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,

resting and rowing by turns, and oftener “poling” the shallower surface,

but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant. My recollection of the

old survey enables me to guess the relative position of the meanderings

of the creek, and an occasional simple professional experiment to

determine the distance gives my crew the fullest faith in my ability.

Night overtakes us in our impeded progress. Our condition looks more

dangerous than it really is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still

new in this mode of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of

perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on in this way until about

eight o'clock, and ground by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a few

hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the white

walls of Altascar's appear like a snowbank before us. Lights are moving

in the courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose characterizes

the building.

One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar met

me on the corridor.

I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who had

dragged wearily with me. He looked at my hand, which still unconsciously

held the broken riata. I began, wearily, to tell him about George and

my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was even his wont, he gravely

laid his hand on my shoulder.

“POCO A POCO, senor--not now. You are tired, you have hunger, you have

cold. Necessary it is you should have peace.”

He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac, which he

gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank and threw themselves

before the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was

intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the

corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard's habitual gravity

was deeper; we might have been shut out from the world as well as

the whistling storm, behind those ancient walls with their time-worn

inheritor.

Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few minutes two

smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my men

ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept

down the instincts of hunger.

I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.

“You have eat?”

I said, “Yes,” to please him.

“BUENO, eat when you can--food and appetite are not always.”

He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his

countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than

a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly

before him.

“It was made by me, senor.”

“I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,” I said. “If I could find

him--”

“He is here.”

“Here! and”--but I could not say “well!” I understood the gravity of

the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of the

building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the clue to the

broken riata at last. Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor

to a somber apartment. A few tall candles were burning in sconces before

the window.

In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and

sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the

humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their

household. I stepped beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him

once before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice than that he

had known was here, and his generous heart was stilled forever.

“He was honest and brave,” said the old man, and turned away. There

was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her graceful

outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that buried her

downcast face. I did not seem to notice her, and, retiring presently,

left the loving and loved together.

When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows

of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that morning met the

horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he

found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his

person; that he had probably become exhausted in fording the creek, and

that he had as probably reached the mound only to die for want of that

help he had so freely given to others; that, as a last act, he had freed

his horse. These incidents were corroborated by many who collected

in the great chamber that evening--women and children--most of them

succored through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless

above.

He was buried in the Indian mound--the single spot of strange perennial

greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the dusty plain. A

little slab of sandstone with the initials “G. T.” is his monument,

and one of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey of the

“Espiritu Santo Rancho.”

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a

quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion,

and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness.

She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the

latest fashion. She had only two blemishes: one of her velvety eyes,

when examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a

small scar left by a single drop of vitriol--happily the only drop of

an entire phial--thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that

reached the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer

had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was

generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek

was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of

THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was “an exaggerated

dimple.” Colonel Starbottle was instantly “reminded of the beautifying

patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the

blankest beautiful women that, blank you, you ever laid your two blank

eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New Orleans. And this woman had a

scar--a line extending, blank me, from her eye to her blank chin. And

this woman, sir, thrilled you, sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent

your blank soul to perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I

said to her, 'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar,

blank you?' And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man

that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself, purposely, I

did, blank me.' These were her very words, sir, and perhaps you think it

a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank sum you can name and prove

it, blank me.”

Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been in

love with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that their love

was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own husband. He alone

had been known to express skepticism.

The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction was

Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to marry this

Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced; but it was hinted

that some previous experiences of hers in that legal formality had made

it perhaps less novel, and probably less sacrificial. I would not have

it inferred from this that she was deficient in sentiment, or devoid of

its highest moral expression. Her intimate friend had written (on the

occasion of her second divorce), “The cold world does not understand

Clara yet”; and Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the

exception of a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul

than the whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read

those lines entitled “Infelissimus,” commencing “Why waves no cypress

o'er this brow?” originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the

signature of “The Lady Clare,” without feeling the tear of sensibility

tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his

cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT

INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character

of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable

answer to the query.

Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical

manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the

newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick.

Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a

too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which

an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced

in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a

six-mule freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out

the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a

certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some

reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several mining

camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the dreariness of the

dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in

sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as

brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities--they were

married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or

“Fideletown,” as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.

The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr.

Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while

freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that

which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery

and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to

beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to

a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr.

Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly

to the columns of the AVALANCHE. It was at this time that Colonel

Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the

genius of Sappho, and pointed it out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a

two-columned criticism, signed “A. S.,” also published in the AVALANCHE,

and supported by extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess

a font of Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian

numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel

Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit to accept

the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language with which the

colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to

be familiar. Indeed, the next week's INTELLIGENCER contained some vile

doggerel supposed to be an answer to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly

written by the wife of a Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing

eulogium signed “A. S. S.”

The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of the

AVALANCHE. “An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday last,

between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER and the

well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in front of the Eureka Saloon.

Two shots were fired by the parties without injury to either, although

it is said that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the

calves of his legs from the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which

were not intended for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of

Melican man's firearms hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known,

although it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that

points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations have

often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those that are

posted.”

Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these trying

circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. “The old man's

head is level,” said one long-booted philosopher. “Ef the colonel

kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops the colonel,

Tretherick is all right. Either way, he's got a sure thing.” During

this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick one day left her

husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the

clothes she had on her back. Here she staid for several weeks, during

which period it is only justice to say that she bore herself with the

strictest propriety.

It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick, unattended,

left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street toward the fringe of

dark pines which indicated the extreme limits of Fiddletown. The few

loungers at that early hour were preoccupied with the departure of the

Wingdown coach at the other extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick

reached the suburbs of the settlement without discomposing observation.

Here she took a cross street or road, running at right angles with the

main thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.

It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town. The

dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And here she

was joined by Colonel Starbottle.

The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port

which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and

his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm,

swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however,

vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes;

and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his

place at her side.

“The coast is clear,” said the colonel, “and Tretherick is over at Dutch

Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a Chinaman; and you

need fear no trouble from him. I,” he continued, with a slight inflation

of the chest that imperiled the security of his button, “I will see that

you are protected in the removal of your property.”

“I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!” simpered the

lady as they walked along. “It's so pleasant to meet someone who

has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened and

heartless as this.” And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not

until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her companion.

“Yes, certainly, of course,” said the colonel, glancing nervously up and

down the street--“yes, certainly.” Perceiving, however, that there

was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs.

Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the

possession of too much soul. That many women--as a gentleman she would

excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--but many beautiful women

had often sought his society, but being deficient, madam, absolutely

deficient, in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when two

natures thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sordid trammels of

a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a

hypocritical society--when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled

in poetical union, then--but here the colonel's speech, which had been

remarkable for a certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost

inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have

heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.

Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite

virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination.

It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very

pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost

files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in

which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new,

uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At

the farther end of the lot, a Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there

was no other sign of occupancy. “The coast,” as the colonel had said,

was indeed “clear.” Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel

would have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. “Come for me

in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed,” she said,

as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and pressed it

with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned; for the

gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his chest, and trip away as

smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had

gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted

hall, and then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom.

Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the

dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it

when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she

had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were

half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay

her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her

I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened

with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to

the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers

the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came

upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty

head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast

in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned

away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where

hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing

suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment,

thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the next instant

lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness

to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time

sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could

not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the

dress she was then wearing, before the mirror. And then suddenly she

became aware of a child's voice close beside her, and she stopped. And

then the child's voice repeated, “Is it Mamma?”

Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a

little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was

torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled

seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque

little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain

self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much

to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently

of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a

cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long

shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders

and swept the floor.

The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had

but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in

the doorway, again asked, “Is it Mamma?” she answered sharply, “No, it

isn't,” and turned a severe look upon the intruder.

The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance,

said in deliciously imperfect speech:

“Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?”

But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the

child's shoulders, and said angrily:

“How dared you take my things, you bad child?”

“Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!” she

continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had

dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts with both hands, was

dancing up and down before her.

“What's your name, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the

small and not very white hands from her garments.

“Tarry.”

“Tarry?”

“Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline.”

“Caroline?”

“Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick.”

“Whose child ARE you?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly, to

keep down a rising fear.

“Why, yours,” said the little creature with a laugh. “I'm your little

durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol' mamma's dorn

away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid my ol' mamma now. I

live wid you and Papa.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.

“I fink it's free days,” said Carry reflectively.

“You think! Don't you know?” sneered Mrs. Tretherick. “Then, where did

you come from?”

Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a

great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered:

“Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last week.”

“Last week! You said three days just now,” returned Mrs. Tretherick with

severe deliberation.

“I mean a monf,” said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness

and confusion.

“Do you know what you are talking about?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick

shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her

and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.

But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs.

Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever.

“There now--stop that sniffling,” said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating

her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly

uncomfortable. “Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother.

Stop,” she continued, as Carry moved away. “Where's your papa?”

“He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's been dorn”--she hesitated--“two,

free, days.”

“Who takes care of you, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her

curiously.

“John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the beds.”

“Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any more,”

said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. “Stop--where

are you going?” she added as the child began to ascend the stairs,

dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.

“Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma.”

“I ain't your mamma,” shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly

re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.

Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set to

work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her

best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung: she scratched

her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while, she kept up an

indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to

herself she saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first

wife--this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care--just

to insult her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would

follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn,

but RED--of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother,

and, if so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been

prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been

kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when

needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on--business, as he

said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but no, she had gone East.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to

dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious,

also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely

no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched

a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among

the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful

attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious

coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon

the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem

describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came

upon her husband and “another” flaunting in silks and diamonds. She

pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a beautiful

wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the

AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all

this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her. He--she

laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her

face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.

What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so

quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She fancied

that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings

and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor

above. This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been

used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly

upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.

Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small

window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the

barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's

glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor

with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking

to it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was

rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the

doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its

stay there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs.

Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation

almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception. After she had

informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the

interview she added pathetically, “that if she was dood, very dood, she

might be her mamma, and love her very much.”

I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of

humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected

her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her

cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.

The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose

very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness,

the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure--all these

touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.

She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and

thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the

room were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a

dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she

suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of

the colonel's cane.

She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the

hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated

statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. “Don't

tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged beforehand; for I know it was!”

she almost screamed. “And think,” she added, “of the heartlessness of

the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way.”

“It's a blank shame!” stammered the colonel, without the least idea

of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to

comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate of

her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He

stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but

all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a

sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.

“It's of no use,” said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer

to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing her hand from

the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. “It's of no use:

my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I

shall stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I

will put him face to face with his infamy.”

I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the

convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity afforded

by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's own child in

his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle

to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental

nature. But, before he could say anything, Carry appeared on the landing

above them, looking timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.

“That's her,” said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions,

in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical

construction.

“Ah!” said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental affection

and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. “Ah! pretty

little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How are you? You find

yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little girl?” The colonel's impulse

also was to expand his chest and swing his cane, until it occurred to

him that this action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven.

Carry, however, took no immediate notice of this advance, but further

discomposed the chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick

and hiding herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.

Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into

an attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous

resemblance to the “Madonna and Child.” Mrs. Tretherick simpered, but

did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause for a

moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to the child,

said in a whisper: “Go now. Don't come here again, but meet me tonight

at the hotel.” She extended her hand: the colonel bent over it gallantly

and, raising his hat, the next moment was gone.

“Do you think,” said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and a

prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls just

visible in the folds of her dress--“do you think you will be 'dood' if I

let you stay in here and sit with me?”

“And let me tall you Mamma?” queried Carry, looking up.

“And let you call me Mamma!” assented Mrs. Tretherick with an

embarrassed laugh.

“Yeth,” said Carry promptly.

They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye instantly caught sight of

the trunk.

“Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?” she said with a quick nervous look,

and a clutch at the woman's dress.

“No-o,” said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.

“Only playing your dowin' away,” suggested Carry with a laugh. “Let me

play too.”

Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next room, and presently

reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely proceeded to

pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they were not many. A

question or two regarding them brought out some further replies from

the child; and before many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in

possession of all her earlier history. But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick

had been obliged to take Carry upon her lap, pending the most

confidential disclosures. They sat thus a long time after Mrs.

Tretherick had apparently ceased to be interested in Carry's

disclosures; and when lost in thought, she allowed the child to rattle

on unheeded, and ran her fingers through the scarlet curls.

“You don't hold me right, Mamma,” said Carry at last, after one or two

uneasy shiftings of position.

“How should I hold you?” asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,

half-embarrassed laugh.

“Dis way,” said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm around

Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--“dis

way--dere.” After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike some small

animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in

that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in

the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her.

She began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old

horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled

days of sickness and distrust--days of an overshadowing fear--days of

preparation for something that was to be prevented, that WAS prevented,

with mortal agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have

been--she dared not say HAD been--and wondered. It was six years ago;

if it had lived, it would have been as old as Carry. The arms which were

folded loosely around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten

their clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a

half-sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the

sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as if

she would hide it in the grave dug there years before. And the gust that

shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.

A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily in

her sleep. But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to do it

now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that they might

have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the slowly declining

sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and abandonment, yet a

desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay, or despair.

Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in

vain. And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his husks,

he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes and sunbeams.

When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking Mr.

Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and much

diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown. THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER openly

alluded to the “forcible abduction” of the child with the same freedom,

and it is to be feared the same prejudice, with which it had criticized

the abductor's poetry. All of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps

a few of the opposite sex, whose distinctive quality was not,

however, very strongly indicated, fully coincided in the views of the

INTELLIGENCER. The majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that

Mrs. Tretherick had shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty

slippers was enough for them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair

abductor more than her offense. They promptly rejected Tretherick as

an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to

openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an

ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent

man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in barrooms, saloons,

and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display

of sentiment. “She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel,” said one

sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great

readiness of illustration; “and it's kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away

someday, and stampede that theer colt: but thet she should shake YOU,

Kernel, diet she should jist shake you--is what gits me. And they do

say thet you jist hung around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them

corriders, and histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered

in and out o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?” It was another generous

and tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine

on the colonel's wounds. “The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick

prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to the

stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked you, and

offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your looks, and ud

employ you agin--and now you say it ain't so? Well, I'll tell the boys

it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories DO get round.”

Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in

Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,

stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child. He further

deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento coach,

and secured a passage for herself and child to San Francisco. It was

true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal value. But nobody doubted

it. Even those who were skeptical of the pagan's ability to recognize

the sacredness of the truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced

unconcern. But it would appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of

this veracious chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.

It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick that

Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two passing

Chinamen. They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped with long

poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An animated conversation

at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother Mongolians--a conversation

characterized by that usual shrill volubility and apparent animosity

which was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who

did not understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling with

which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was

passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply

kicked them out of his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a

stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips

of yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a

small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the dim

solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed,

ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials “C. T.”

Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his blouse, and proceeded to wash

his dishes in the sink with a smile of guileless satisfaction.

Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. “Me no likee

Fiddletown. Me belly sick. Me go now.” Mr. Tretherick violently

suggested a profane locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and withdrew.

Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel

Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently

interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed him a

letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece. “If you bring me an answer, I'll

double that--sabe, John?” Ah Fe nodded. An interview equally accidental,

with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and another

gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of the

AVALANCHE. Yet I regret to state that, after proceeding some distance

on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and after

trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into

accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother

Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony

of Colonel Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten

side of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean

clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his

letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese laundry

of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as peculiarly

affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the

levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details

of this breach of trust, would find ample retributive justice in the

difficulties that subsequently attended Ah Fe's pilgrimage.

On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of

the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian, whose

moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to opium-smoking.

At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger--purely an act of

Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known

hands from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested on

suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe

reprimand--possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of

justice. At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public

schools; but, by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened

progress, he at last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese

quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the

strong arm of the law.

The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and

on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy

Fook's several clients.