contemplating a large, stiff, yellow hat with an enormous brim, that
was placed on the floor before him. His hands rested lightly between his
knees, but one foot was drawn up at the side of his chair in a peculiar
manner. In the first glance that Islington gave, the attitude in some
odd, irreconcilable way suggested a brake. In another moment he dashed
across the room, and, holding out both hands, cried, “Yuba Bill!”
The man rose, caught Islington by the shoulders, wheeled him round,
hugged him, felt of his ribs like a good-natured ogre, shook his hands
violently, laughed, and then said, somewhat ruefully, “And how ever did
you know me?”
Seeing that Yuba Bill evidently regarded himself as in some elaborate
disguise, Islington laughed, and suggested that it must have been
instinct.
“And you?” said Bill, holding him at arm's length, and surveying him
critically,--“you!--toe think--toe think--a little cuss no higher nor a
trace, a boy as I've flicked outer the road with a whip time in agin, a
boy ez never hed much clothes to speak of, turned into a sport!”
Islington remembered, with a thrill of ludicrous terror, that he still
wore his evening dress.
“Turned,” continued Yuba Bill, severely,--“turned into a restyourant
waiter,--a garsong! Eh, Alfonse, bring me a patty de foy grass and an
omelette, demme!”
“Dear old chap!” said Islington, laughing, and trying to put his
hand over Bill's bearded mouth, “but you--YOU don't look exactly like
yourself! You're not well, Bill.” And indeed, as he turned toward the
light, Bill's eyes appeared cavernous, and his hair and beard thickly
streaked with gray.
“Maybe it's this yer harness,” said Bill, a little anxiously. “When I
hitches on this yer curb” (he indicated a massive gold watch-chain with
enormous links), “and mounts this 'morning star,'” (he pointed to a very
large solitaire pin which had the appearance of blistering his whole
shirt-front), “it kinder weighs heavy on me, Tommy. Otherwise I'm all
right, my boy,--all right.” But he evaded Islington's keen eye, and
turned from the light.
“You have something to tell me, Bill,” said Islington, suddenly, and
with almost brusque directness; “out with it.”
Bill did not speak, but moved uneasily toward his hat.
“You didn't come three thousand miles, without a word of warning, to
talk to me of old times,” said Islington, more kindly, “glad as I would
have been to see you. It isn't your way, Bill, and you know it. We shall
not be disturbed here,” he added, in reply to an inquiring glance that
Bill directed to the door, “and I am ready to hear you.”
“Firstly, then,” said Bill, drawing his chair nearer Islington, “answer
me one question, Tommy, fair and square, and up and down.”
“Go on,” said Islington, with a slight smile.
“Ef I should say to you, Tommy,--say to you to-day, right here, you must
come with me,--you must leave this place for a month, a year, two years
maybe, perhaps forever,--is there anything that 'ud keep you,--anything,
my boy, ez you couldn't leave?”
“No,” said Tommy, quietly; “I am only visiting here. I thought of
leaving Greyport to-day.”
“But if I should say to you, Tommy, come with me on a pasear to Chiny,
to Japan, to South Ameriky, p'r'aps, could you go?”
“Yes,” said Islington, after a slight pause.
“Thar isn't ennything,” said Bill, drawing a little closer, and lowering
his voice confidentially,--“ennything in the way of a young woman--you
understand, Tommy--ez would keep you? They're mighty sweet about here;
and whether a man is young or old, Tommy, there's always some woman as
is brake or whip to him!”
In a certain excited bitterness that characterized the delivery of
this abstract truth, Bill did not see that the young man's face flushed
slightly as he answered “No.”
“Then listen. It's seven years ago, Tommy, thet I was working one o'
the Pioneer coaches over from Gold Hill. Ez I stood in front o' the
stage-office, the sheriff o' the county comes to me, and he sez, 'Bill,'
sez he, 'I've got a looney chap, as I'm in charge of, taking 'im down to
the 'sylum in Stockton. He'z quiet and peaceable, but the insides don't
like to ride with him. Hev you enny objection to give him a lift on the
box beside you?' I sez, 'No; put him up.' When I came to go and get up
on that box beside him, that man, Tommy,--that man sittin' there, quiet
and peaceable, was--Johnson!
“He didn't know me, my boy,” Yuba Bill continued, rising and putting his
hands on Tommy's shoulders,--“he didn't know me. He didn't know nothing
about you, nor Angel's, nor the quicksilver lode, nor even his own name.
He said his name was Skaggs, but I knowd it was Johnson. Thar was times,
Tommy, you might have knocked me off that box with a feather; thar
was times when if the twenty-seven passengers o' that stage hed found
theirselves swimming in the American River five hundred feet below
the road, I never could have explained it satisfactorily to the
company,--never.
“The sheriff said,” Bill continued hastily, as if to preclude any
interruption from the young man,--“the sheriff said he had been
brought into Murphy's Camp three years before, dripping with water, and
sufferin' from perkussion of the brain, and had been cared for generally
by the boys 'round. When I told the sheriff I knowed 'im, I got him to
leave him in my care; and I took him to 'Frisco, Tommy, to 'Frisco,
and I put him in charge o' the best doctors there, and paid his board
myself. There was nothin' he didn't have ez he wanted. Don't look that
way, my dear boy, for God's sake, don't!”
“O Bill,” said Islington, rising and staggering to the window, “why did
you keep this from me?”
“Why?” said Bill, turning on him savagely,--“why? because I warn't a
fool. Thar was you, winnin' your way in college; thar was YOU, risin' in
the world, and of some account to it; yer was an old bummer, ez good ez
dead to it,--a man ez oughter been dead afore! a man ez never denied it!
But you allus liked him better nor me,” said Bill, bitterly.
“Forgive me, Bill,” said the young man, seizing both his hands. “I know
you did it for the best; but go on.”
“Thar ain't much more to tell, nor much use to tell it, as I can see,”
said Bill, moodily. “He never could be cured, the doctors said, for he
had what they called monomania,--was always talking about his wife and
darter that somebody had stole away years ago, and plannin' revenge
on that somebody. And six months ago he was missed. I tracked him to
Carson, to Salt Lake City, to Omaha, to Chicago, to New York,--and
here!”
“Here!” echoed Islington.
“Here! And that's what brings me here to-day. Whethers he's crazy or
well, whethers he's huntin' you or lookin' up that other man, you must
get away from here. You mustn't see him. You and me, Tommy, will go away
on a cruise. In three or four years he'll be dead or missing, and then
we'll come back. Come.” And he rose to his feet.
“Bill,” said Islington, rising also, and taking the hand of his friend,
with the same quiet obstinacy that in the old days had endeared him to
Bill, “wherever he is, here or elsewhere, sane or crazy, I shall seek
and find him. Every dollar that I have shall be his, every dollar that I
have spent shall be returned to him. I am young yet, thank God, and can
work; and if there is a way out of this miserable business, I shall find
it.”
“I knew,” said Bill, with a surliness that ill concealed his evident
admiration of the calm figure before him--“I knew the partikler style
of d--n fool that you was, and expected no better. Good by, then--God
Almighty! who's that?”
He was on his way to the open French window, but had started back, his
face quite white and bloodless, and his eyes staring. Islington ran to
the window, and looked out. A white skirt vanished around the corner of
the veranda. When he returned, Bill had dropped into a chair.
“It must have been Miss Masterman, I think; but what's the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Bill, faintly; “have you got any whiskey handy?”
Islington brought a decanter, and, pouring out some spirits, handed the
glass to Bill. Bill drained it, and then said, “Who is Miss Masterman?”
“Mr. Masterman's daughter; that is, an adopted daughter, I believe.”
“Wot name?”
“I really don't know,” said Islington, pettishly, more vexed than he
cared to own at this questioning.
Yuba Bill rose and walked to the window, closed it, walked back again
to the door, glanced at Islington, hesitated, and then returned to his
chair.
“I didn't tell you I was married--did I?” he said suddenly, looking up
in Islington's face with an unsuccessful attempt at a reckless laugh.
“No,” said Islington, more pained at the manner than the words.
“Fact,” said Yuba Bill. “Three years ago it was, Tommy,--three years
ago!”
He looked so hard at Islington, that, feeling he was expected to say
something, he asked vaguely, “Who did you marry?”
“Thet's it!” said Yuba Bill; “I can't ezactly say; partikly, though, a
she devil! generally, the wife of half a dozen other men.”
Accustomed, apparently, to have his conjugal infelicities a theme of
mirth among men, and seeing no trace of amusement on Islington's grave
face, his dogged, reckless manner softened, and, drawing his chair
closer to Islington, he went on: “It all began outer this: we was coming
down Watson's grade one night pretty free, when the expressman turns to
me and sez, 'There's a row inside, and you'd better pull up!' I pulls
up, and out hops, first a woman, and then two or three chaps swearing
and cursin', and tryin' to drag some one arter them. Then it 'pear'd,
Tommy, thet it was this woman's drunken husband they was going to put
out for abusin' her, and strikin' her in the coach; and if it hadn't
been for me, my boy, they'd hev left that chap thar in the road. But I
fixes matters up by putting her alongside o' me on the box, and we drove
on. She was very white, Tommy,--for the matter o' that, she was always
one o' these very white women, that never got red in the face,--but she
never cried a whimper. Most wimin would have cried. It was queer, but
she never cried. I thought so at the time.
“She was very tall, with a lot o' light hair meandering down the back of
her head, as long as a deer-skin whip-lash, and about the color. She hed
eyes thet'd bore you through at fifty yards, and pooty hands and feet.
And when she kinder got out o' that stiff, narvous state she was in, and
warmed up a little, and got chipper, by G-d, sir, she was handsome,--she
was that!”
A little flushed and embarrassed at his own enthusiasm, he stopped, and
then said, carelessly, “They got off at Murphy's.”
“Well,” said Islington.
“Well, I used to see her often arter thet, and when she was alone she
allus took the box-seat. She kinder confided her troubles to me, how her
husband got drunk and abused her; and I didn't see much o' him, for
he was away in 'Frisco arter thet. But it was all square, Tommy,--all
square 'twixt me and her.
“I got a going there a good deal, and then one day I sez to myself,
'Bill, this won't do,' and I got changed to another route. Did you ever
know Jackson Filltree, Tommy?” said Bill, breaking off suddenly.
“No.”
“Might have heerd of him, p'r'aps?”
“No,” said Islington, impatiently.
“Jackson Filltree ran the express from White's out to Summit, 'cross the
North Fork of the Yuba. One day he sez to me, 'Bill, that's a mighty bad
ford at the North Fork.' I sez, 'I believe you, Jackson.' 'It'll git
me some day, Bill, sure,' sez he. I sez, 'Why don't you take the lower
ford?' 'I don't know,' sez he, 'but I can't.' So ever after, when I
met him, he sez, 'That North Fork ain't got me yet.' One day I was in
Sacramento, and up comes Filltree. He sez, 'I've sold out the express
business on account of the North Fork, but it's bound to get me yet,
Bill, sure'; and he laughs. Two weeks after they finds his body below
the ford, whar he tried to cross, comin' down from the Summit way. Folks
said it was foolishness: Tommy, I sez it was Fate! The second day arter
I was changed to the Placerville route, thet woman comes outer the
hotel above the stage-office. Her husband, she said, was lying sick in
Placerville; that's what she said; but it was Fate, Tommy, Fate. Three
months afterward, her husband takes an overdose of morphine for delirium
tremems, and dies. There's folks ez sez she gave it to him, but it's
Fate. A year after that I married her,--Fate, Tommy, Fate!
“I lived with her jest three months,” he went on, after a long
breath,--“three months! It ain't much time for a happy man. I've seen
a good deal o' hard life in my day, but there was days in that three
months longer than any day in my life,--days, Tommy, when it was a
toss-up whether I should kill her or she me. But thar, I'm done. You are
a young man, Tommy, and I ain't goin' to tell things thet, old as I am,
three years ago I couldn't have believed.”
When at last, with his grim face turned toward the window, he sat
silently with his clinched hands on his knees before him, Islington
asked where his wife was now.
“Ask me no more, my boy,--no more. I've said my say.” With a gesture as
of throwing down a pair of reins before him, he rose, and walked to the
window.
“You kin understand, Tommy, why a little trip around the world 'ud do me
good. Ef you can't go with me, well and good. But go I must.”
“Not before luncheon, I hope,” said a very sweet voice, as Blanche
Masterman suddenly stood before them. “Father would never forgive me if
in his absence I permitted one of Mr. Islington's friends to go in this
way. You will stay, won't you? Do! And you will give me your arm now;
and when Mr. Islington has done staring, he will follow us into the
dining-room and introduce you.”
“I have quite fallen in love with your friend,” said Miss Blanche, as
they stood in the drawing-room looking at the figure of Bill, strolling,
with his short pipe in his mouth, through the distant shrubbery. “He
asks very queer questions, though. He wanted to know my mother's maiden
name.”
“He is an honest fellow,” said Islington, gravely.
“You are very much subdued. You don't thank me, I dare say, for keeping
you and your friend here; but you couldn't go, you know, until father
returned.”
Islington smiled, but not very gayly.
“And then I think it much better for us to part here under these
frescos, don't you? Good by.”
She extended her long, slim hand.
“Out in the sunlight there, when my eyes were red, you were very anxious
to look at me,” she added, in a dangerous voice.
Islington raised his sad eyes to hers. Something glittering upon her own
sweet lashes trembled and fell.
“Blanche!”
She was rosy enough now, and would have withdrawn her hand, but
Islington detained it. She was not quite certain but that her waist
was also in jeopardy. Yet she could not help saying, “Are you sure that
there isn't anything in the way of a young woman that would keep you?”
“Blanche!” said Islington in reproachful horror.
“If gentlemen will roar out their secrets before an open window, with
a young woman lying on a sofa on the veranda, reading a stupid French
novel, they must not be surprised if she gives more attention to them
than her book.”
“Then you know all, Blanche?”
“I know,” said Blanche, “let's see--I know the partiklar style
of--ahem!--fool you was, and expected no better. Good by.” And, gliding
like a lovely and innocent milk snake out of his grasp, she slipped
away.
To the pleasant ripple of waves, the sound of music and light voices,
the yellow midsummer moon again rose over Greyport. It looked upon
formless masses of rock and shrubbery, wide spaces of lawn and beach,
and a shimmering expanse of water. It singled out particular objects,--a
white sail in shore, a crystal globe upon the lawn, and flashed upon
something held between the teeth of a crouching figure scaling the low
wall of Cliffwood Lodge. Then, as a man and woman passed out from under
the shadows of the foliage into the open moonlight of the garden path,
the figure leaped from the wall, and stood erect and waiting in the
shadow.
It was the figure of an old man, with rolling eyes, his trembling hand
grasping a long, keen knife,--a figure more pitiable than pitiless, more
pathetic than terrible. But the next moment the knife was stricken from
his hand, and he struggled in the firm grasp of another figure that
apparently sprang from the wall beside him.
“D--n you, Masterman!” cried the old man, hoarsely; “give me fair play,
and I'll kill you yet!”
“Which my name is Yuba Bill,” said Bill, quietly, “and it's time this
d--n fooling was stopped.”
The old man glared in Bill's face savagely. “I know you. You're one
of Masterman's friends,--d--n you,--let me go till I cut his heart
out,--let me go! Where is my Mary?--where is my wife?--there she is!
there!--there!--there! Mary!” He would have screamed, but Bill placed
his powerful hand upon his mouth, as he turned in the direction of the
old man's glance. Distinct in the moonlight the figures of Islington and
Blanche, arm in arm, stood out upon the garden path.
“Give me my wife!” muttered the old man hoarsely, between Bill's
fingers. “Where is she?”
A sudden fury passed over Yuba Bill's face. “Where is your wife?” he
echoed, pressing the old man back against the garden wall, and holding
him there as in a vice. “Where is your wife?” he repeated, thrusting his
grim sardonic jaw and savage eyes into the old man's frightened face.
“Where is Jack Adam's wife? Where is MY wife? Where is the she-devil
that drove one man mad, that sent another to hell by his own hand, that
eternally broke and ruined me? Where! Where! Do you ask where? In
jail in Sacramento,--in jail, do you hear?--in jail for murder,
Johnson,--murder!”
The old man gasped, stiffened, and then, relaxing, suddenly slipped,
a mere inanimate mass, at Yuba Bill's feet. With a sudden revulsion of
feeling, Yuba Bill dropped at his side, and, lifting him tenderly in
his arms, whispered, “Look up, old man, Johnson! look up, for
God's sake!--it's me,--Yuba Bill! and yonder is your daughter,
and--Tommy!--don't you know--Tommy, little Tommy Islington?”
Johnson's eyes slowly opened. He whispered, “Tommy! yes, Tommy! Sit by
me, Tommy. But don't sit so near the bank. Don't you see how the river
is rising and beckoning to me,--hissing, and boilin' over the rocks?
It's gittin higher!--hold me, Tommy,--hold me, and don't let me go yet.
We'll live to cut his heart out, Tommy,--we'll live--we'll--” His head
sank, and the rushing river, invisible to all eyes save his, leaped
toward him out of the darkness, and bore him away, no longer to the
darkness, but through it to the distant, peaceful shining sea.
HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON'S BAR.
It had been raining in the valley of the Sacramento. The North Fork
had overflowed its banks and Rattlesnake Creek was impassable. The few
boulders that had marked the summer ford at Simpson's Crossing were
obliterated by a vast sheet of water stretching to the foothills. The up
stage was stopped at Grangers; the last mail had been abandoned in the
tules, the rider swimming for his life. “An area,” remarked the
“Sierra Avalanche,” with pensive local pride, “as large as the State of
Massachusetts is now under water.”
Nor was the weather any better in the foothills. The mud lay deep on the
mountain road; wagons that neither physical force nor moral objurgation
could move from the evil ways into which they had fallen, encumbered the
track, and the way to Simpson's Bar was indicated by broken-down teams
and hard swearing. And farther on, cut off and inaccessible, rained
upon and bedraggled, smitten by high winds and threatened by high water,
Simpson's Bar, on the eve of Christmas day, 1862, clung like a swallow's
nest to the rocky entablature and splintered capitals of Table Mountain,
and shook in the blast.
As night shut down on the settlement, a few lights gleamed through
the mist from the windows of cabins on either side of the highway now
crossed and gullied by lawless streams and swept by marauding winds.
Happily most of the population were gathered at Thompson's store,
clustered around a red-hot stove, at which they silently spat in some
accepted sense of social communion that perhaps rendered conversation
unnecessary. Indeed, most methods of diversion had long since been
exhausted on Simpson's Bar; high water had suspended the regular
occupations on gulch and on river, and a consequent lack of money and
whiskey had taken the zest from most illegitimate recreation. Even Mr.
Hamlin was fain to leave the Bar with fifty dollars in his pocket,--the
only amount actually realized of the large sums won by him in the
successful exercise of his arduous profession. “Ef I was asked,” he
remarked somewhat later,--“ef I was asked to pint out a purty little
village where a retired sport as didn't care for money could exercise
hisself, frequent and lively, I'd say Simpson's Bar; but for a young man
with a large family depending on his exertions, it don't pay.” As Mr.
Hamlin's family consisted mainly of female adults, this remark is quoted
rather to show the breadth of his humor than the exact extent of his
responsibilities.
Howbeit, the unconscious objects of this satire sat that evening in the
listless apathy begotten of idleness and lack of excitement. Even the
sudden splashing of hoofs before the door did not arouse them. Dick
Bullen alone paused in the act of scraping out his pipe, and lifted
his head, but no other one of the group indicated any interest in, or
recognition of, the man who entered.
It was a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson's
Bar as “The Old Man.” A man of perhaps fifty years; grizzled and scant
of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of
ready, but not very powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude
for taking on the shade and color of contiguous moods and feelings. He
had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at first
notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest
man jocularly, and threw himself into a vacant chair.
“Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar,--Jim
Smiley,--funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest
yarn about--”
“Smiley's a ---- fool,” interrupted a gloomy voice.
“A particular ---- skunk,” added another in sepulchral accents.
A silence followed these positive statements. The Old Man glanced
quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed. “That's so,”
he said reflectively, after a pause, “certingly a sort of a skunk and
suthin of a fool. In course.” He was silent for a moment as in painful
contemplation of the unsavoriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley.
“Dismal weather, ain't it?” he added, now fully embarked on the current
of prevailing sentiment. “Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show
for money this season. And tomorrow's Christmas.”
There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but whether of
satisfaction or disgust was not plain. “Yes,” continued the Old Man in
the lugubrious tone he had, within the last few moments, unconsciously
adopted,--“yes, Christmas, and to-night's Christmas eve. Ye see, boys,
I kinder thought--that is, I sorter had an idee, jest passin' like, you
know--that may be ye'd all like to come over to my house to-night and
have a sort of tear round. But I suppose, now, you wouldn't? Don't feel
like it, may be?” he added with anxious sympathy, peering into the faces
of his companions.
“Well, I don't know,” responded Tom Flynn with some cheerfulness.
“P'r'aps we may. But how about your wife, Old Man? What does SHE say to
it?”
The Old Man hesitated. His conjugal experience had not been a happy one,
and the fact was known to Simpson's Bar. His first wife, a delicate,
pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and secretly from the jealous
suspicions of her husband, until one day he invited the whole Bar to his
house to expose her infidelity. On arriving, the party found the shy,
petite creature quietly engaged in her household duties, and retired
abashed and discomfited. But the sensitive woman did not easily recover
from the shock of this extraordinary outrage. It was with difficulty
she regained her equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the
closet in which he was concealed and escape with him. She left a boy of
three years to comfort her bereaved husband. The Old Man's present wife
had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and aggressive.