A STURDY COLONIST
For the contrast betwixt that dreadful scene and the one on which my
dim eyes slowly opened, three days afterward, first I thank the Lord in
heaven, whose gracious care was over me, and after Him some very simple
members of humanity.
A bronze-colored woman, with soft, sad eyes, was looking at me
steadfastly. She had seen that, under tender care, I was just beginning
to revive, and being acquainted with many troubles, she had learned to
succor all of them. This I knew not then, but felt that kindness was
around me.
“Arauna, arauna, my shild,” she said, in a strange but sweet and
soothing voice, “you are with the good man in the safe, good house. Let
old Suan give you the good food, my shild.”
“Where is my father? Oh, show me my father?” I whispered faintly, as she
raised me in the bed and held a large spoon to my lips.
“You shall--you shall; it is too very much Inglese; me tell you when
have long Sunday time to think. My shild, take the good food from poor
old Suan.”
She looked at me with such beseeching eyes that, even if food had been
loathsome to me, I could not have resisted her; whereas I was now in
the quick-reviving agony of starvation. The Indian woman fed me with
far greater care than I was worth, and hushed me, with some soothing
process, into another abyss of sleep.
More than a week passed by me thus, in the struggle between life and
death, before I was able to get clear knowledge of any body or any
thing. No one, in my wakeful hours, came into my little bedroom except
this careful Indian nurse, who hushed me off to sleep whenever I wanted
to ask questions. Suan Isco, as she was called, possessed a more than
mesmeric power of soothing a weary frame to rest; and this was seconded,
where I lay, by the soft, incessant cadence and abundant roar of water.
Thus every day I recovered strength and natural impatience.
“The master is coming to see you, shild,” Suan said to me one day, when
I had sat up and done my hair, and longed to be down by the water-fall;
“if, if--too much Inglese--old Suan say no more can now.”
“If I am ready and able and willing! Oh, Suan, run and tell him not to
lose one moment.”
“No sure; Suan no sure at all,” she answered, looking at me calmly, as
if there were centuries yet to spare. “Suan no hurry; shild no hurry;
master no hurry: come last of all.”
“I tell you, Suan, I want to see him. And I am not accustomed to be
kept waiting. My dear father insisted always--But oh, Suan, Suan, he is
dead--I am almost sure of it.”
“Him old man quite dead enough, and big hole dug in the land for him.
Very good; more good than could be. Suan no more Inglese.”
Well as I had known it long, a catching of the breath and hollow,
helpless pain came through me, to meet in dry words thus the dread which
might have been but a hovering dream. I turned my face to the wall, and
begged her not to send the master in.
But presently a large, firm hand was laid on my shoulder softly, and
turning sharply round, I beheld an elderly man looking down at me. His
face was plain and square and solid, with short white curls on a
rugged forehead, and fresh red cheeks, and a triple chin--fit base for
remarkably massive jaws. His frame was in keeping with his face, being
very large and powerful, though not of my father's commanding height.
His dress and appearance were those of a working--and a really
hard-working--man, sober, steadfast, and self-respecting; but what
engaged my attention most was the frank yet shrewd gaze of deep-set
eyes. I speak of things as I observed them later, for I could not pay
much heed just then.
“'Tis a poor little missy,” he said, with a gentle tone. “What things
she hath been through! Will you take an old man's hand, my dear? Your
father hath often taken it, though different from his rank of life.
Sampson Gundry is my name, missy. Have you ever heard your father tell
of it?”
“Many and many a time,” I said, as I placed my hot little hand in his.
“He never found more than one man true on earth, and it was you, Sir.”
“Come, now,” he replied, with his eyes for a moment sparkling at my
warmth of words; “you must not have that in your young head, missy. It
leads to a miserable life. Your father hath always been unlucky--the
most unlucky that ever I did know. And luck cometh out in nothing
clearer than in the kind of folk we meet. But the Lord in heaven
ordereth all. I speak like a poor heathen.”
“Oh, never mind that!” I cried: “only tell me, were you in time to
save--to save--” I could not bear to say what I wanted.
“In plenty of time, my dear; thanks to you. You must have fought when
you could not fight: the real stuff, I call it. Your poor father lies
where none can harm him. Come, missy, missy, you must not take on so. It
is the best thing that could befall a man so bound up with calamity. It
is what he hath prayed for for many a year--if only it were not for you.
And now you are safe, and for sure he knows it, if the angels heed their
business.”
With these words he withdrew, and kindly sent Suan back to me, knowing
that her soothing ways would help me more than argument. To my mind
all things lay in deep confusion and abasement. Overcome with bodily
weakness and with bitter self-reproach, I even feared that to ask any
questions might show want of gratitude. But a thing of that sort could
not always last, and before very long I was quite at home with the
history of Mr. Gundry.
Solomon Gundry, of Mevagissey, in the county of Cornwall, in England,
betook himself to the United States in the last year of the last
century. He had always been a most upright man, as well as a first-rate
fisherman; and his family had made a rule--as most respectable families
at that time did--to run a nice cargo of contraband goods not more than
twice in one season. A highly querulous old lieutenant of the British
navy (who had served under Nelson and lost both, arms, yet kept “the
rheumatics” in either stump) was appointed, in an evil hour, to the
Cornish coast-guard; and he never rested until he had caught all the
best county families smuggling. Through this he lost his situation, and
had to go to the workhouse; nevertheless, such a stir had been roused
that (to satisfy public opinion) they made a large sacrifice of inferior
people, and among them this Solomon Gundry. Now the Gundries had long
been a thickset race, and had furnished some champion wrestlers; and
Solomon kept to the family stamp in the matter of obstinacy. He made a
bold mark at the foot of a bond for 150 pounds; and with no other sign
than that, his partner in their stanch herring-smack (the Good Hope,
of Mevagissey) allowed him to make sail across the Atlantic with all he
cared for.
This Cornish partner deserved to get all his money back; and so he did,
together with good interest. Solomon Gundry throve among a thrifty race
at Boston; he married a sweet New England lass, and his eldest son was
Sampson. Sampson, in the prime of life, and at its headstrong period,
sought the far West, overland, through not much less of distance, and
through even more of danger, than his English father had gone through.
His name was known on the western side of the mighty chain of mountains
before Colonel Fremont was heard of there, and before there was any
gleam of gold on the lonely sunset frontage.
Here Sampson Gundry lived by tillage of the nobly fertile soil ere
Sacramento or San Francisco had any name to speak of. And though he did
not show regard for any kind of society, he managed to have a wife and
son, and keep them free from danger. But (as it appears to me the more,
the more I think of every thing) no one must assume to be aside the
reach of Fortune because he has gathered himself so small that she
should not care to strike at him. At any rate, good or evil powers smote
Sampson Gundry heavily.
First he lost his wife, which was a “great denial” to him. She fell from
a cliff while she was pegging out the linen, and the substance of her
frame prevented her from ever getting over it. And after that he lost
his son, his only son--for all the Gundries were particular as to
quality; and the way in which he lost his son made it still more sad for
him.
A reputable and valued woman had disappeared in a hasty way from a
cattle-place down the same side of the hills. The desire of the Indians
was to enlarge her value and get it. There were very few white men as
yet within any distance to do good; but Sampson Gundry vowed that, if
the will of the Lord went with him, that woman should come back to her
family without robbing them of sixpence. To this intent he started
with a company of some twenty men--white or black or middle-colored
(according to circumstances). He was their captain, and his son Elijah
their lieutenant. Elijah had only been married for a fortnight, but was
full of spirit, and eager to fight with enemies; and he seems to have
carried this too far; for all that came back to his poor bride was a
lock of his hair and his blessing. He was buried in a bed of lava on the
western slope of Shasta, and his wife died in her confinement, and was
buried by the Blue River.
It was said at the time and long afterward that Elijah Gundry--thus
cut short--was the finest and noblest young man to be found from the
mountains to the ocean. His father, in whose arms he died, led a sad and
lonely life for years, and scarcely even cared (although of Cornish and
New England race) to seize the glorious chance of wealth which lay at
his feet beseeching him. By settlement he had possessed himself of a
large and fertile district, sloping from the mountain-foot along the
banks of the swift Blue River, a tributary of the San Joaquin. And this
was not all; for he also claimed the ownership of the upper valley, the
whole of the mountain gorge and spring head, whence that sparkling water
flows. And when that fury of gold-digging in 1849 arose, very few men
could have done what he did without even thinking twice of it.
For Sampson Gundry stood, like a bull, on the banks of his own river,
and defied the worst and most desperate men of all nations to pollute
it. He had scarcely any followers or steadfast friends to back him; but
his fame for stern courage was clear and strong, and his bodily presence
most manifest. Not a shovel was thrust nor a cradle rocked in the bed of
the Blue River.
But when a year or two had passed, and all the towns and villages, and
even hovels and way-side huts, began to clink with money, Mr. Gundry
gradually recovered a wholesome desire to have some. For now his
grandson Ephraim was growing into biped shape, and having lost his
mother when he first came into the world, was sure to need the more
natural and maternal nutriment of money.
Therefore Sampson Gundry, though he would not dig for gold, wrought
out a plan which he had long thought of. Nature helped him with all her
powers of mountain, forest, and headlong stream. He set up a saw-mill,
and built it himself; and there was no other to be found for twelve
degrees of latitude and perhaps a score of longitude.